Blake and the Bible 9780300168389

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BLAKE AND THE BIBLE

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BLAKE AND THE BIBLE CHRISTOPHER ROWLAND

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW HAVEN LONDON

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Published with assistance from the Annie Burr Lewis Fund Copyright © 2010 by Christopher Rowland All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. For information about this and other Yale University Press publications please contact: U.S. Office: [email protected] yalebooks.com Europe Office: [email protected] www.yalebooks.co.uk Set in Arno Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rowland, Christopher, 1947Blake and the Bible / Christopher Rowland. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-300-11260-3 1. Blake, William, 1757–1827—Religion 2. Bible—In literature. 3. Religious poetry, English—History and criticism. I. Title. PR4148.B52R69 2010 821'.7—dc22 2010044588 ISBN 978-0-300-11260-3 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Catherine, Jon, Susanne and Zoë

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Contents List of illustrations List of plates Preface Acknowledgements Chronology of William Blake’s life Editorial note and abbreviations 1 The Old and New Testaments are ‘the Great Code of Art’

ix x xii xiv xvi xix 1

2 ‘Thus did Job continually’: the biblical hermeneutics of Blake’s Job engravings: Part I

13

3 ‘But now my eye seeth thee’: the biblical hermeneutics of Blake’s Job engravings: Part II

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4 Exploring the contraries in divinity

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5 Blake and ‘The Bible of Hell’: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The First Book of Urizen and drawings for the Book of Enoch

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6 ‘Would to God that all the Lords people were prophets’

120

7 William Blake and the radical interpretation of the Bible: Gerrard Winstanley, Abiezer Coppe, Ralph Cudworth, and Hans Denck

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8 ‘From impulse not from rules’: Blake and Jesus

181

9 Antinomianism, atonement and life in the Divine Body: Blake and Paul

200

10 Interpreting the Bible through images

217

11 Blake and biblical interpretation: some concluding reflections

233

Appendix I Extract from William Blake’s Notebook, ‘The Everlasting Gospel’

243

Appendix II The Design of The Last Judgment

246

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CONTENTS

Notes Bibliography Index of Blake’s texts and illuminated books Index of references to Blake’s images Index of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and other Jewish texts Index of New Testament and other early Christian texts Index of names and subjects

249 260 273 276 278 282 286

List of illustrations Rights were not granted to include these illustrations in electronic media. Please refer to print publication. 2.1 2.2 2.2a 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.8a 3.9 3.10 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5

Title page of Illustrations of The Book of Job Job’s initial state Satan and the sons of God before the divine throne Catastrophe strikes Job’s sons and daughters The messenger comes to Job Satan goes forth from the divine prescence Satan smiting Job with boils Job’s comforters Job’s despair The vision of Eliphaz Job rebuked by comforters Job’s nightmare The message of Elihu God in the Whirlwind The morning stars Behemoth and Leviathan The Fall of Satan ‘But now my Eye seeth thee’ Job prays for his friends Job and his wife receive gifts Job and his daughters Job’s latter state The Daughters of Men welcome an Angel An angel teaching a Daughter of Men the Secrets of Sin The Descent of the Angels to one of the Daughters of Men The Daughter of Men becomes a Siren Enoch before the Great Glory

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List of plates

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‘The Nativity’, 1799–1800, Philadelphia Museum of Art, B401 ‘Job’s Night Vision’, c. 1805–6, Pierpont Morgan Museum, B550 11 ‘The Vision of the Last Judgment’, 1808, Petworth House, Sussex, B642 ‘Elohim Creating Adam’, 1795, Tate Gallery, London, B289 ‘The Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve’, c. 1826, Tate Gallery, London, B806 ‘Ezekiel’s Wheels’, 1803–5, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, B468 ‘The Baptism of Christ’, c. 1803, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, B475 ‘The Woman taken in Adultery’, c. 1805, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, B486 ‘Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem’, 1800, Pollok House, Glasgow, B422 ‘The Ascension’, c. 1803–5, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, B505 ‘The Soldiers casting Lots for Christ’s Garments’, 1800, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, B495 Jerusalem plate 76, Copy E, Yale Center for British Art, c. 1821 ‘The Four and Twenty Elders’, c. 1803–5; Tate Gallery, London, B515 ‘Beatrice addressing Dante from “that celestial chariot”’, 1824–7, Tate Gallery, London, B812 88 ‘The Whore of Babylon’, 1809, British Museum, B523 Edward Young’s ‘Night Thoughts’ Title Page to ‘Night the Eighth ‘Virtue’s Apology: or The Man of the World Answer’d’, British Museum, c. 1795–7, B330 345 ‘The River of Life’, 1805, Tate Gallery, London, B525 ‘David delivered out of many Waters: “He rode upon the Cherubim”’, c. 1805, Tate Gallery, London, B462 ‘London’ from Songs of Experience, Copy F, Yale Center for British Art, 1789/94

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20 and 21 ‘Holy Thursday’ from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Copies L and F, Yale Center for British Art, 1795 and 1789/94 22 and 23 Opening page and plate 4 from The First Book of Urizen, Copies C and D, Yale Center for British Art, and British Museum 1794 24 Milton a Poem, plate 15, Copy A, British Museum, 1811 25 ‘An Allegory of the Bible’, 1780–5, Tate Gallery, London, B127

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Preface

In the following pages my debt to Blake scholars, past and present, is everywhere apparent. When I first became interested in Blake’s work the writing of Northrop Frye was inspirational for me and led me to the comprehension of the hermeneutical significance of Blake’s work which has stayed with me ever since. Contemporary with Frye’s classic 1947 study Fearful Symmetry, J. G. Davies, from the background of theological studies, saw Blake as a critic of a Church that was blighted by worldly Deist clergy, more interested in quenching enthusiasm than in helping the poor in the eighteenth century (Davies 1948). The intellectual context of this book lies particularly in the study of radicalism and prophecy explored by Paley, Mee, Thompson, Burdon and Makdisi. Morton Paley’s study of Blake’s late works has proved to be an invaluable resource not least in terms of the historical contextualisation which illuminates Blake’s interpretation. There is still room, I think, for a detailed study of the possible biblical allusions in Blake’s use of the Bible, but in this book I am not setting out to do that (cf. Tolley 1974). The aim is to seek to understand the character of Blake’s engagement with the Bible and of his biblical hermeneutics, building on the insights provided over the years by all those who have succeeded in contextualising Blake’s work, hermeneutically and historically. Blake deserves to be considered as one of the foremost English biblical interpreters, and a significant voice in the history of biblical interpretation. The study of the Job sequence will show Blake at his best as a careful reader of texts, capable of engaging in a visual exegesis which at first sight sits loose to the text but on closer inspection is found to get closer to a grasp of the text than more literalminded exegesis. Blake had the Bible in his bloodstream. He produced readings which moved beyond the literal sense and threw valuable shafts of light. The background of this book is half a lifetime immersed in historical scholarship on the New Testament and in its ancient first-century context. Alongside this there has been an interest in the dissident traditions of Christianity, which

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either kept alive differing doctrines or were involved in the active promotion of different kinds of social arrangements. My work on the New Testament has centred on the ways in which apocalypticism and eschatology are the interpretative keys which unlock the understanding of Christian origins (Rowland 2002). It is my hope that I may offer further insight to Blake scholars by sharing aspects of biblical scholarship, especially on apocalyptic texts and the Jewish world from which Christianity emerged and the history of biblical interpretation. After all, the prophetic and apocalyptic texts are crucial for understanding Blake’s work. I hope also that I may enable students of the Bible to be more aware of what a remarkable biblical interpreter Blake was and what an important part he has in any history of biblical hermeneutics. It is a decade or more since I first started working on Blake and the Bible. Any book is an articulation of one’s knowledge and grasp of a subject at a particular moment in one’s life. As I complete this book, I am acutely aware of how much more I have to learn about Blake and also how much more I should include even on the subject of Blake and the Bible. To paraphrase the last words of a wellknown biblical book much loved by Blake: ‘there are many other things . . . the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.’ Christopher Rowland University of Oxford

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Acknowledgements

Many people have helped me with this book over the last decade as I have shared Blake’s images and words with audiences in different parts of the UK and further afield. Without exception, Blake’s words and images have elicited a fund of insight from my hearers, which has contributed to many of the ideas expressed in these pages. For their comments I am indebted to many, known and unknown to me. Most recently, Blake’s perspective on the character, life and teaching of Jesus formed my 2008 Shafer Lectures at Yale Divinity School. Many friends and colleagues, especially Adela and John Collins and Peter Hawkins, gave me feedback during the happy week I spent in New Haven. During that visit I met Tony Rosso for the first time. He has since helped me to see things about Blake’s engagement with the Bible that I had missed before. Paul Joyce shared some of my early explorations of Blake’s Job engravings as we tried to match up Vaughan Williams’s music to the Job pictures in several joint presentations over the years. Jane Shaw has been a constant companion in exploring the nature of the wider prophetic context of Blake’s writing as we have co-directed in the Prophecy Project at the University of Oxford together. Philip Lockley, who has been part of the Prophecy Project, helped with editorial work and shared his work on Zion Ward. John Drury and Paul Fiddes read an earlier draft of the book and showed me how to improve what I had written. John, in particular, has encouraged me since we taught together in Cambridge twenty-five years ago and has continually pointed to a more humane and broad-minded approach to the Bible. David Fuller in a memorable series of letters, a long conversation, and his own writing, has helped me see what a close reading of my text and subjective criticism involve. If my book can put into practice a fraction of what he has suggested a self-involving criticism involves, I shall be well satisfied. As I have struggled to get a presentable typescript ready for publication, I have been helped particularly by my wife, Catherine, whose editorial skills have helped me turn this into a more readable book. Over the last five years Jon

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Roberts and Susanne Sklar have shared their enthusiasm for Blake and have helped me learn so much. They read the book and made helpful comments, but it has been the conversations with them from which I have learnt more than they can ever realise about the kind of writer and artist – indeed, biblical exegete that Blake was. They will see the insights they have contributed on many pages in this book. Zoë Bennett’s skill as an exponent of Sachexegese proved invaluable at a critical moment in the genesis of this book. We have enjoyed sharing our work on Ruskin and Blake, convinced that their writings, like the Bible itself, are not just objects of study but keys to human flourishing. Malcolm Gerratt of Yale University Press patiently accompanied me through the process of making this a book fit for publication. I have appreciated his gentle forbearance. Vanessa Mitchell who copy-edited my book did so much more. Working with her showed me a model of editorial wisdom which enabled the book to be improved in a multitude of ways. Elisabeth Jessen and Benny Grey Schuster commented on the book at different stages. When I started to write this book, David Gowler offered me hospitality in Atlanta. At the very end of the process of proof-reading, Mary Lynn Johnson graciously offered to read the book and shared her wide knowledge of the Blake corpus with me, thereby greatly enhancing the quality of the book. My experience with her and others has been that of Job – ‘Everyone also gave him a piece of Money’ – profound gratitude and amazement at the generosity shown to me. All my friends and colleagues had to work with what they were given, and they bear no responsibility for the errors and shortcomings that remain. I am deeply grateful to them all.

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Chronology of William Blake’s life with important works mentioned in this book1

1757 Born in London and baptized in St James Piccadilly on 11 December 1772 Apprenticed to the engraver James Basire 1774 Makes drawings in Westminster Abbey 1779 Enters the school of the Royal Academy 1780–5 Exhibits seven watercolours at the Royal Academy 1782 Marriage to Catherine Boucher in St Mary’s Battersea 1787 Death of Robert Blake 1788? All Religions are One (a defence of the primacy of the prophetic and imagination as the foundation of all religion), There is no Natural Religion (a challenge to empiricism by demanding attention to the exercise of imagination) 1789 Attends first General Conference of The New Jerusalem (Swedenborgian) Church Songs of Innocence, The Book of Thel 1790 Moves to Lambeth The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (mixture of sayings and narrative, with a satirical hue, which marks Blake’s separation from Swedenborg doctrine, and challenges mainstream Christian doctrine in a way which gets those who engage with the text to see things differently) 1791 The French Revolution 1793 America A Prophecy (the first of Blake’s prophetic texts in which Blake the prophet, in word and image, reveals the deeper meaning of the conflict between England and the fledgling American state by portraying the involvement of superhuman forces) Visions of the Daughters of Albion (a poem which explores the problems for women from men as they explore their sexual identity) 1 Aileen Ward in Eaves: 2003: xvii–xix, Stevenson 2007: xvii–xxiii and Bentley 2001, especially 452–63, for a list of Blake’s chief writings.

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1794 Europe A Prophecy (the second of Blake’s prophecies about the rationalism which pervades European religion, the fires of revolution which threaten to engulf it and the terrible consequences for ordinary people) The First Book of Urizen (an exploration of the origin and pervasiveness of political tyranny and the hegemony of law leading to the creation of religion as a mystery which obscures humanity’s destiny and oppresses their flourishing) Songs of Innocence and of Experience 1795–7 Designs and engravings for Young’s ‘Night Thoughts’ The Book of Ahania, The Song of Los 1796?–1807 Vala or The Four Zoas (an unfinished work which uses apocalyptic imagery to explore the complexity of human psychology and the conflicts between imagination, passion, reason and compassion in the human person) 1798 Annotations to Watson’s Apology (‘To defend the Bible in this year 1798 would cost a man his life’) 1799 Fifty temperas on the Bible ordered by Thomas Butts (including ‘The Nativity’) 1800 Moves to Felpham, Sussex and works for William Hayley 1803 Encounter with soldier and indicted for sedition and returns to London and lives at South Molton Street, London 1803–10 Paints over one hundred water colours for Butts on themes from the Bible 1804 Trial for seditious utterance and acquittal 1804–11? Milton A Poem (Blake imagines the spirit of puritanical Milton being redeemed from his narrow-mindedness by means of Blake’s poetic endeavour so that he may inspire Britain to renewed mental endeavour) 1804–20? Jerusalem (Blake’s last major illuminated book which laments the plight of Albion, Britain, and explores the tortuous nature of redemption, both individually and nationally, its frustrations and false starts in the journey to fulfilment) 1805–6 Job Butts set 1807? The Ballads or The Pickering Manuscript 1808 ‘The Last Judgment’ 1809 Unsuccessful exhibition at 28 Broad Street outlined in A Descriptive Catalogue and criticised by Robert Hunt 1810–11 Prints first two copies of Milton A Poem 1811 Crabb Robinson reports that that the poet Robert Southey had visited Blake and seen a copy of Jerusalem c. 1815 Illustrations to Milton’s ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’, Butts set 1818 Meets John Linnell

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‘The Everlasting Gospel’ (approximate date for this MS notebook: a re-telling of stories in the gospels presenting Jesus as both a threat to the state and an antinomian) 1820 Prints first complete copy of Jerusalem 1821 Moves to 3 Fountain Court, the Strand Job Linnell set 1822 The Ghost of Abel 1824 Drawings of the Book of Enoch 1824–7 Dante Divine Comedy 1825 Illustrations of The Book of Job 1826? Laocoön 1826–7 Illuminated Genesis Manuscript, Annotations to Thornton’s ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ 1827 Death on 12 August, buried Bunhill Fields, London, 17 August 1827

Editorial note and abbreviations

References to Blake’s works given in the text are normally to The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, edited by David V. Erdman (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), but in some extracts quoted in the text the punctuated version found in Blake: Complete Writings, ed. G. Keynes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), is used. References to Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, are to the text volume with discussion of individual images, not to the plates volume. America B BR Europe CHL E FZ J K KJV M MHH NRSV Urizen

America A Prophecy (1793) Butlin, M., The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, Text and Plates (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981) Bentley, G. E., Jr, Blake Records, 2nd edn (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004) Europe a Prophecy (1794) Corns, T. N., Hughes, A., Loewenstein, D., The Complete Works of Gerrard Winstanley, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) The Complete Poetry & Prose (ed. Erdman) The Four Zoas or Vala (1797) Jerusalem, The Emanation of the Giant Albion (1804) Blake: Complete Writings (ed. G. Keynes) King James Version of the Bible, 1611 Milton, A Poem in 2 Books (1804) The Marriage of Heaven and Hell New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (1989) The First Book of Urizen (1794)

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Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 3

1

The Old and New Testaments are ‘the Great Code of Art’ BLAKE

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Blake was a brilliant biblical interpreter – eccentric, perhaps, but one of Britain’s most insightful exegetes. Engagement with his work reshapes the way in which one reads the Bible, views and experiences the world, and for that matter, God. He grasped the Bible’s underlying patterns and themes and reproduced them in different ways in images, poetry, prose and illuminated books. His purpose was not an aesthetic act, narrowly conceived. For him the text was a means to an end: to bring about the conversion of minds, hearts and lives to a life of ‘forgiveness of sins’ and the abjuration of ‘Religion hid in war, a Dragon red, and hidden Harlot’ ( J75:20; E231, J89:53; E249; M37:43; E138; cf. Rev 12:3 and 17:1–5). This book rests on two fundamental assumptions. Firstly, that there is an underlying consistency in Blake’s approach, notwithstanding the supposed turn to Christianity after the Felpham years. Thus, the unfinished ‘Everlasting Gospel’ shows us Blake articulating the kind of theological sentiments which are to be found in the illuminated books of the 1790s (Paley 2003: 183; Daniell 2003). Secondly, Blake the modern prophet saw himself not only in continuity with the prophets but also as someone whose own peculiar mythology was already anticipated by John on Patmos (FZviii:600–03, E385–6). What we find in ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ are theological themes used with little reference to the mythological system featuring in earlier works but conveying the same sentiments, using biblical figures only. This is also true of the Job sequence. Blake retains much of the theological framework which is evident in The First Book of Urizen and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell but engages more closely with the biblical text (though it has been argued that there is less coherence in the attitude to the Bible taken in the late works, Paley 2003: 231). A generation of scholarship has located Blake in a tradition of radicalism and non-conformity. Not only was he just one of several individuals who claimed to

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be prophets at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, but also his ways of interpreting the Bible have their antecedents in English radicalism, especially that of the seventeenth century. For Blake, as for the seventeenth-century writers, biblical, prophetic texts, including the Book of Revelation, were not merely a matter of otherworldly expectation but had a bearing on current politics and the role of human agency in establishing God’s Kingdom on earth. Blake’s seventeenth-century predecessors made similar kinds of interpretative moves to his, and were indebted to the kind of interpretation which may be found on the left wing of the Reformation in the writings of authors like Hans Denck. Elements such as the priority given to the Spirit over the Letter; the critique of a theology which places supreme value on what is found in a book rather than attending to what Blake calls ‘the Word of God Universal’ (Annotations to Watson’s Apology, E615); the advocacy of a religion of divine immanence rather than transcendence; experience as the motor of theological and ethical change – all these have their antecedents in seventeenthcentury biblical interpretation. Throughout his life the Bible dominated Blake’s imaginative world. Yet while there can be few writers and artists whose work is so permeated with biblical themes, Blake is at the same time one of the Bible’s fiercest critics, not least in the way he inveighed against a theology which viewed God as a remote monarch and lawgiver. It was the use of the Bible as an instrument of social control, a handbook of divinely ordained texts of moral virtue, so widespread in the society of his day, that he sought to challenge. This is no better exemplified than in The First Book of Urizen, where Blake very deliberately parodied the Book of Genesis and, to a lesser extent, that of Exodus. The rewritten creation story is clearly intended to challenge the normative role that this story had in the moral ordering of society. After all, at the heart of the Genesis story of the exclusion from the Garden of Eden, there is a divine imperative: ‘Thou shalt not eat of the fruit’ (Gen 3:3). The prescriptions, and indeed, restrictions derived from the literal reading of the Bible meant for Blake ‘binding with briars’ one’s ‘joys and desires’ (‘The Garden of Love’, E26). So he took the biblical themes and represented them in a way which more truly reflected his understanding of that which he considered to be the heart of the divine in human (Regan 2002: 115–27; 219–22). To see the Bible as a book full of ‘Moral Virtues’ is to miss its focus. For Blake ‘the Whole Bible is filld with Imaginations and Visions from End to End & not with Moral virtues’ (On Berkeley, E664). According to Blake, the moral virtues are to be linked with the philosophy of the Greeks. Such classical learning came to be regarded by him

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as a snare from which Christianity needed to be freed. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Blake sees Christianity as the practice of the forgiveness of sins, but not obedience to a list of commands, or assent to virtues. ‘The Gospel is Forgiveness of Sins & has No Moral Precepts; these belong to Plato & Seneca & Nero’ (‘Annotations to Watson’s Apology’, K395, E619). Blake’s writings with regard to the Bible seem to have undergone a change between the 1780s and ’90s and the last decades of his life (suggested by letters of 22 November 1802, E720; Hagstrum 1970). In seeking to explain this, we might consider two circumstances. In November 1802 Blake experienced what could be called a conversion, about which he wrote two letters to Thomas Butts (Hagstrum 1965: 321–4). In the first, he described emerging from unhappiness to ‘the light of day’ still committed ‘to Eternity’ to ‘Embrace Christianity and Adore him who is the Express image of God but I have traveld thro Perils & Darkness’ (E720). In the second, he wrote a poem about Los descending in flames in the sun to envelop him in a fourfold vision, readying the poet for mental fight (E722). Perhaps the most remarkable of all is the experience he had of a heavenly ascent, of transformation, and of recognition that he was part of the Divine Body. This is set out in some lines he penned for Thomas Butts (E712, quoted below, p. 133). In his famous additional preface to Milton, he rejects the dominance of classical learning and pleads for a return to the Bible as the prime intellectual inspiration. Thereafter, in his art and his illuminated books, there is a more positive engagement with the Bible as the prime source of his inspiration, though, it should be added, the Bible appropriately read. Also, after 1800, as Blake developed further his own complex myth of individual and social redemption, there is a sense in which his focus moved from the particularities of society that he saw in the streets of London to the Bible. Northrop Frye is probably right to suggest that a text like Jerusalem (c.1804–20) mirrors the Bible, consisting of ‘a fall, the struggle of men in a fallen world which is what we usually think of as history, the world’s redemption by a divine man in which eternal life and death achieve a simultaneous triumph, and an apocalypse’ (Frye 1947: 357). The author of Jerusalem is no critical interpreter, but rather a theologian of a grand vision of human redemption, albeit in his idiosyncratic version of systematic theology, who puts into the mouth of his hero Los the words: ‘I must Create a System, or be enslav’d by another Man’s I will not Reason & Compare: my Business is to Create’ (J10: 20-1, K629, E153). Despite Blake’s fierce polemic against the Bible in his earlier works (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and The First Book of Urizen, for example), his views on the Bible remained fairly consistent throughout his life. Thus there are

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BLAKE

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significant continuities between his strong assertion of the priority of the Bible after 1800 and his criticism of the Bible in earlier works. Particularly in the Job engravings, completed in 1825, there is once again the depiction of false religion as a religion dominated by respect for the book and lacking the immediate apprehension of God, which comes through vision. The Job sequence reflects Blake’s major theological concerns throughout his life and is also consistent with other texts and images written in the last years of his life. THE

AMBIGUITY OF THE BOOK

The dominance of ‘the book’, particularly the Bible, provides one of the great conundrums of Blake’s work. It is impossible to ignore the fact that the role of the book is problematic for Blake. An interpreter wrestles with the fact that the great deconstructor of the supremacy of authoritative writings was himself not only dependent on texts for his inspiration and material, but produced extra-ordinary works that were presented as prophetic and authoritative in character. We see this in the Job engravings, discussed in the next two chapters. In Europe A Prophecy, for example, the depiction of Urizen with his book of brass is the ultimate deconstruction of a religion based on the book (Europe 12/14, E64). When we bear in mind the amazing deconstruction of a holy book in The First Book of Urizen, where the format of the King James translation of the Bible is used as the basis of the iconographic presentation of the text (particularly Copy D Plates 3 and 4) in a deliberate attempt to challenge the notion of a holy authoritative book, we can begin to see that the book was part of the problem for Blake, not the solution. And yet ‘illuminated books’ are the medium of his deconstruction. Recent criticism of Blake’s early work has stressed the way in which Blake’s own production of variant versions of his manuscripts, especially in the Urizen books (named after the cold, isolated, imposer of moral laws – a key figure in Blake’s mythology), subverted the notion of an authoritative text. This use of variants was found noteworthy by contemporary readers such as Alexander Geddes, whose suggestions about the fragmentary nature of the myths of Genesis might well have informed Blake’s various and multiple versions of the Book of Urizen (McGann 1986). Even though he set great store by the effectiveness of his illuminated texts, Blake seemed to have been aware that his own writing could end up being considered an authoritative text. Hence he attempted to problematise his text by producing differing versions, varying both the order and the colour of the illuminations. He also used the juxtaposition of text and image as a way of enhancing and problematising one by way of the other.

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In the Job sequence the issue of the book is dealt with iconographically in two ways. First of all, we find that the books which have been central at both the human and divine level disappear from the engravings themselves and appear instead in the marginal drawings, as for example in Engraving 17, where Job rejects the appeal to memory and tradition (‘I have heard thee with the hearing of the Ear but now my Eye seeth thee’). The contents of the book, here made legible to the viewer, gloss the images rather than vice versa. Secondly, in the final scene, in place of the books are scrolls, and the occasional pamphlet, as well as the musical instruments – all more ephemeral than a weighty tome. THE BIBLE ‘ROUZING

THE FACULTIES TO ACT’

Towards the end of his life, in one of his aphorisms in his Laocoön engraving (E273–5), Blake describes the Bible as ‘the Great Code of Art’. In Blake’s day the word ‘code’ denoted a system, or collection, of rules or regulations. It could also mean ‘a collection of writings forming a book, such as the Old or the New Testament’ (OED). Thus in 1794 William Paley wrote: ‘The Christian Scriptures were divided into two codes or volumes’, and, ‘. . . intending by the one a code or collection of Christian sacred writings, as the other expressed the code or collection of Jewish sacred writings’ (Evidences I. I. ix. §3). Susanne Sklar has suggested that a modern analogy might be the code which unlocks doors in buildings thereby giving access to another space (Sklar 2007). This is certainly a suggestive description when we consider how Blake used the word. He seems to indicate that the Bible offered in its variety and totality the prime hermeneutical and aesthetic guide, full of interpretative potential. As a way of approaching the text of the Bible, such a view ran against the emerging historicism, which fascinated contemporary interpreters like Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Harding 2007), and it went even more counter to the dismissive attitude taken to patristic and medieval interpretation by earlier English writers like William Tyndale in The Obedience of the Christian Man (1528, modern edition 2000). The kind of interpretative process set up by Blake in his work is illustrated by remarks he made in a letter to The Reverend Dr Trusler, in which we find a characteristic mix of the pragmatic and sublime. Dr Trusler had commissioned Blake to produce several paintings, but when he was sent the first for approval he took exception to Blake’s flights of imaginative fancy and the lack of naturalism, and demanded an explanation of the picture. Blake responded that he had ‘attempted every morning for a fortnight together to follow your Dictate’, but ‘have been compelld by my Genius or Angel to follow where he led’ (E701).

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In other words, the ideas were the result of a supernatural impulse. In response to Trusler’s request for an explanation, Blake responded in one of his eloquent statements of his art: I really am sorry that you are fall’n out with the Spiritual World, Especially if I should have to answer for it. I feel very sorry that your Ideas & Mine on Moral Painting differ so much as to have made you angry with my method of Study. If I am wrong, I am wrong in good company. I had hoped your plan comprehended All Species of this Art, & Especially that you would not reject that Species which gives Existence to Every other, namely Visions of Eternity. You say that I want somebody to Elucidate my Ideas. But you ought to know that What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care. The wisest of the Ancients consider’d what is not too Explicit as the fittest for Instruction, because it rouzes the faculties to act. I name Moses, Solomon, Esop, Homer, Plato. (punctuation as Keynes 793; E702)

While the Bible has peculiar powers to ‘rouze the faculties to act’, it is by no means the only text which will do so – Blake mentions Moses, Solomon, Esop, Homer and Plato. He continues: Why is the Bible more Entertaining & Instructive than any other book? Is it not because they [including other inspired books] are addressed to the Imagination, which is Spiritual Sensation, & but mediately to the Understanding or Reason? (Keynes 794, E702–3)

He goes on to sketch the differences in human perception, implicitly contrasting his own imaginative talent with the more prosaic, blinkered view of reality entertained by Dr Trusler: . . . I feel that a Man may be happy in This World. And I know that This World Is a World of Imagination & Vision. I see Every thing I paint In This World, but Every body does not see alike. To the Eyes of a Miser a Guinea is more beautiful than the Sun, & a bag worn with the use of Money has more beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with Grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way. Some See Nature all Ridicule & Deformity, & by these I shall not regulate my proportions; & Some Scarce see Nature at all. But to the Eyes of the Man of Imagination, Nature is Imagination itself. As a man is, So he Sees. As the Eye is formed, such

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are its Powers. You certainly Mistake, when you say that the Visions of Fancy are not be found in This World. To Me This World is all One continued Vision of Fancy or Imagination, & I feel Flatter’d when I am told So. (Keynes 793–4; E702)

‘Everybody does not see alike’. The importance of perspective, not only in aesthetics but also in theology, is crucial. Blake was enough of a protestant and a non-conformist to see that the interpretation of the Bible led to a variety of different interpretations: ‘Both read the Bible day & night/But thou readst black where I read white’ (E524). In a manner reminiscent of the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, Blake recognises a particular affinity with children and their ability to have a broader vision of the world than that which is typical of many adults (Matthew 11:25; 18:2–4): But I am happy to find a Great Majority of Fellow Mortals who can Elucidate My Visions, & Particularly they have been Elucidated by Children, who have taken a greater delight in contemplating my Pictures than I even hoped. Neither Youth nor Childhood is Folly or Incapacity. Some Children are Fools & so are some Old Men. But There is a vast Majority on the side of Imagination or Spiritual Sensation. (‘Letter to Trusler’, Keynes 794; E703)

THE BIBLE

AS A COLLECTION OF

‘S E N T I M E N T S & E X A M P L E S ’

In some revealing marginal notes Blake made to his copy of Apology for the Bible by the Bishop of Llandaff, Richard Watson, in which the bishop repudiated the views of Tom Paine, the intellectual inspiration of both the American and French revolutions (Prickett and Strathman 2006), we find some of Blake’s most pungent reactions to the Bible – pungent in the sense that what he read had touched a deep vein of intellectual compassion for Paine, which is manifest in the words he wrote. In these notes we see that Blake will have no truck with apologies for those parts of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible in which God is represented as sanctioning genocide: To me, who believe the Bible & profess myself a Christian, a defence of the Wickedness of the Israelites in murdering so many thousands under pretence of a command from God is altogether Abominable & Blasphemous. Wherefore did

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Christ come? Was it not to abolish the Jewish Imposture? Was not Christ murder’d because he taught that God loved all Men & was their father and forbad all contention for Worldly prosperity in opposition to the Jewish Scriptures . . .? (Keynes 387; E614)

Care is needed here to avoid assuming anti-semitism on Blake’s part. The language is unfortunate, but the ‘Jewish imposture’ is less an ethnic or religious categorisation than a hermeneutical one, in which the term stands for any kind of religion based on divine fiat (he often criticises Christians on the same grounds). God never makes one man murder another, nor one nation. There is a vast difference between an accident brought on by man’s own carelessness & a destruction from the designs of another. The Earthquakes at Lisbon etc. were the Natural result of Sin, but the destruction of the Canaanites by Joshua was the Unnatural design of wicked men. To Extirpate a nation by means of another nation is as wicked as to destroy an individual by means of another individual, which God considers (in the Bible) as Murder & commands that it shall not be done. (Keynes 388; E614–15)

Blake does not explain what he means by ‘the natural result of sin’. What follows, however, suggests that preoccupation with the inexplicable facts of the world, such as natural disasters, must never be used as an excuse to diminish the effects of human agency in promoting death, destruction and oppression. According to Blake, the Bible is less a historical resource than a collection of ‘Sentiments and Examples’: I cannot concieve [sic] the Divinity of the books in the Bible to consist either in who they were written by, or at what time, or in the historical evidence which may be all false in the eyes of one man & true in the eyes of another, but in the Sentiments & Examples, which, whether true or Parabolic, are Equally useful as Examples given to us of the perverseness of some & its consequent evil & the honesty of others & its consequent good. This sense of the Bible is equally true to all & equally plain to all. None can doubt the impression which he recieves [sic] from a book of Examples. If he is good he will abhor wickedness in David or Abraham; if he is wicked he will make their wickedness an excuse for his & so he would do by any other book. (‘Annotations to Watson’s Apology’, Keynes 393; E618)

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ALLEGORICAL HERMENEUTICS AND THE CHALLENGE TO THE HEGEMONY OF REASON

Blake was a radical in the sense that some conservatives are radical. Probably unaware, he harked back to a way of reading the Bible that is more characteristic of the early centuries of Christianity and of medieval scholarship than it is of the early modern period. Biblical allusions (e.g. Beulah, Rahab, Jerusalem, the Lamb of God, the Four Zoas, and Babylon) are dotted all over the Blake corpus. Studying them in their original biblical contexts may not always be the most useful way of understanding Blake’s approach to the Bible, for when he removes characters and concepts from their original context they become part of biblically inspired Blakean ‘systems’. They form part of a kaleidoscopic use of imagery in which the various ingredients are used to produce ever-new arrangements of visual beauty and intellectual meaning. The Bible itself displays many of the features which are typical of Blake’s engagement with it. Take, for example, the way in which Paul treats Abraham in Romans 4:3 (Genesis 15:6) and in Galatians 3:6 and 8 (Genesis 12:3; 15:6). This is such a familiar part of Christian apologetics that it is easy to overlook the extent to which Paul has taken liberties with the literal sense of the biblical text. Not only does he deconstruct notions of Jewish identity by linking Isaac and election with the true children of Abraham, the Christians, but he goes further and regards the Jews as by implication the children of Hagar, enslaved to what Paul here clearly believes is an obsolete religious system (Gal 4:24–9; vv. 28–9: ‘Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now’). The promise to Abraham about his descendants being international in character (Genesis 12:3), and the verse about faith being linked to righteousness (Habakkuk 2:4) become the lens through which the figure of Abraham is read (Galatians 3: 8, 11). Crucially, this reading is determined by Paul’s contemporary experience, namely, that the promise was being fulfilled in the lives of a group considered outsiders. For this reason he largely ignores the material in Genesis, which anticipates the initiatory rite of circumcision (Gen 17: 23–4). What he offers is a rewriting of the Abraham story in a guise suitable for a new situation. Similarly, in Blake’s use of the Bible, the original context of the various allusions is almost completely left behind as the new narrative is woven together. In this kind of interpretation the Bible is a stimulus rather than a template. Once the Bible has ‘rouz’d the faculties to act’ it has done most of its work, as the human imagination takes over and the biblical language offers a new way of addressing life’s dilemmas.

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Blake’s engagement is a form of allegorical approach to the Bible, though ‘allegorical’ in the broadest sense of that word, because Blake had some strong things to say about allegory. It is not so much finding the true meaning behind the text as seeing the text as a gateway to perception, a stimulus to the imagination: The Last Judgment is not Fable or Allegory, but Vision. Fable or Allegory are a totally distinct & inferior kind of Poetry. Vision or Imagination is a Representation of what Eternally Exists, Really & Unchangeably. Fable or Allegory is Form’d by the Daughters of Memory. Imagination is surrounded by the daughters of Inspiration, who in the aggregate are call’d Jerusalem. Fable is Allegory, but what Critics call The Fable, is Vision itself. The Hebrew Bible & the Gospel of Jesus are not Allegory, but Eternal Vision or Imagination of All that Exists. Note here that Fable or Allegory is seldom without some Vision. Pilgrim’s Progress is full of it, the Greek Poets the same; but [Fable & Allegory del.] Allegory & Vision [& Visions of Imagination del.] ought to be known as Two Distinct Things, & so call’d for the Sake of Eternal Life. Plato has made Socrates say that Poets & Prophets do not know or Understand what they write or Utter; this is a most Pernicious Falshood. If they do not, pray is an inferior kind to be call’d Knowing? Plato confutes himself. (‘A Vision of the Last Judgment’, Keynes 604–5; E554)

The meaning of this passage is helpfully illuminated by Northrop Frye: The artist must have confidence that the work of art will carry its own message without putting in an additional one. . . . Allegory in the above sense is closely related to the kind of symbolism which is founded on the simile. To say that a hero is like a lion is a reference to something else on the same imaginative plane . . . the artist, contemplating the hero, searches in his memory for something that reminds him of the hero’s courage, and drags out a lion. But here we have no longer two real things: we have a correspondence of abstractions. . . . (1947: 116; cf. Tannenbaum 1982: 107)

It is easy to see why Blake was so irritated by Dr Trusler’s desire for a neat explanation of his pictures. As he wrote in his letter to that gentleman, art is not something to be deciphered, and this was what straightforward allegory represented for Blake. Yet (and this is important for our comparison of Blake’s method to allegorical exegesis) allegory is a method which points beyond the object, the letter, to something else, without necessarily determining its subject-matter.

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Throughout his work Blake challenged the hegemony of reason. In so doing, he used three major English intellectuals to epitomise the tradition against which he was protesting: the philosopher Francis Bacon (1561–1626), the mathematician Isaac Newton (1642–1727) and the philosopher John Locke (1632–1704). Blake often grouped them together. Whilst he recognised their importance, and of course their influence, Blake saw in their work a displacement of the imagination by reason and a reduction of all things to the material. In Blake’s view, empiricism allows only one type of evidence, and therefore, one type of intellectual experience. Such a position represents, for Blake, a contraction of the variety and complexity of human experience, as it effectively excludes inspiration, emotion, art and religion as valid sources of knowledge, able to help us understand and interpret what he terms ‘minute particulars’ of life. It is this restrictive prioritisation in the use of reason, not reason itself, that Blake considered problematic. Indeed, at the climax of his final redemptive epic Jerusalem, the hitherto infernal trinity of Newton, Bacon and Locke are caught up in the ‘Chariots of the Almighty’ to take their rightful place in an eternal dialectic with imagination, and other facets of human intellectual life (J98:8–12, E257). The intellectual culture which Newton, Bacon and Locke represented for Blake he considered to be the spirit of the age, and it was against this hegemony that he struggled throughout his life. In his letter to Trusler Blake explains the delicate balance between reason and imagination, and the priority of the latter in the intellectual engagement. It is the redressing of the balance between these two which is the cornerstone of Blake’s critical work. Thus, by addressing it ‘but mediately to the understanding, or reason’ Blake stresses the importance of reason as an intermediary but secondary agent, as compared with the imagination, which makes the first encounter with the material, and for which the text of the Bible provides such a paradigmatic stimulus. As Tannenbaum points out, what Blake writes here parallels Augustine, who wrote of the biblical prophecies as having ‘a useful and helpful obscurity for the purpose of exercising and sharpening, as it were, the minds of the readers and of destroying fastidiousness and stimulating the desire to learn’ (Tannenbaum 1982: 118). THE

SCOPE OF THE BOOK

In this book, I take one of Blake’s latest works, his series of engravings on the Book of Job, and use it as a heuristic lens through which to view Blake’s biblical hermeneutics and the distinctive features of his exegesis.

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Then chapter by chapter the book explores some of the issues raised in the discussion of the Job engravings. Blake exploits to the full the complexity of biblical theology: the relationship between God and Satan, and God and the Angel of the Divine Presence being the two most obvious examples. Blake criticised the Bible by challenging the religion of priesthood and tradition (The First Book of Urizen), orthodox Christian views on holiness and dualism (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell), and understandings of the origin of the human predicament in the doctrine of the Fall (drawings for The Book of Enoch). For Blake the ‘spirit of prophecy’ is identified with ‘poetic genius’ (All Religions are One 5, E1), and so, unsurprisingly, with biblical prophecy – especially Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible and the Book of Revelation in the New Testament – offered Blake an inspiration and an example for his own prophetic work. The importance of the spirit and prophecy has its antecedents in English radicalism, especially that of the seventeenth century. These varying approaches to the Bible in post-Reformation radicalism will be considered. Finally, alongside the prophetic books of the Bible, the Gospels and Paul’s letters in the New Testament provided Blake with a series of theological ideas which enabled him to universalise the Pauline language about participation in Christ. The book continues with a more detailed analysis of some of Blake’s illustrations on biblical themes, and the ways in which Blake goes about his biblical interpretation through the medium of images, concluding with some reflections on Blake’s biblical hermeneutics.

2

‘Thus did Job continually’ The biblical hermeneutics of Blake’s Job engravings: Part I

In the sequence of engravings on the Book of Job Blake’s artistic creativity is brought to bear on a biblical book in its entirety. It is a remarkable work of art, with centrally placed scenes framed by biblical commentary in the form of texts, in large part from the Book of Job but from other parts of the Bible as well. Blake combines the work of the biblical commentator, who uses texts from other parts of the Bible to illuminate the passage under consideration,1 with the juxtaposition of image and words that is such a distinctive part of his art (Mitchell 1978; Hagstrum 1958). Blake’s Job, like the biblical book which inspired it, has had its effects on distinguished artists. For example, the remarkable musical rendering of Blake’s Job by Ralph Vaughan Williams (‘Job: A Masque for Dancing’, 1930) takes as its starting point Blake’s interpretation of the Book of Job rather than the biblical book itself. John Ruskin considered the engravings to be ‘of the highest rank in certain characters of imagination and expression’ and in certain respects ‘greater than Rembrandt’ (The Elements of Drawing, 1857, 223) – quite an endorsement from such a discerning critic. Apart from their technical excellence, the sequence is the acme of his theological thinking. The ideas recapitulate familiar themes from the pre-1800 work, such as the critique of divine monarchy, the emphasis on the divine in the human, and the challenge to convention in the name of inspiration. The importance of the Job engravings, and also the watercolours on the same theme, as a guide to Blake’s understanding of the Bible is now widely recognised (Lindberg 1973; Raine 1982; Fisch 1999; Wright 1972). These designs have become key to an interpretation of Blake’s theological and philosophical system. I intend in this study to focus primarily on the assessment of the Job engravings as biblical exegesis. This will include relating the work to other parts of the Blake corpus, but my main aim is to consider the ways in which Blake engages the reader and viewer through these texts and also the quality of the biblical exegesis he produced.

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Blake turned to the Book of Job throughout his life in sketches, watercolours and engravings. The series of engravings is the product of Blake’s last years, made at a time when he was engaged with other biblical books such as the Illustrated Manuscript Copy of Genesis (1826–7; Huntington Library, B828), the ‘Illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy’ (1824–7; Tate Gallery, London, B812–26), and the Five Illustrations to the Book of Enoch (1824–7; National Gallery of Art, Washington, B827). The watercolours illustrating the Book of Job he painted for Butts (1805–6, 1821–7; Pierpont Morgan Library, B550) and Linnell (c. 1821; Fogg Museum, Harvard, B551) are in many ways similar to the engravings, though with contrasting colours, and some subtle differences (Lindberg 1973).2 When Job utters the words, ‘I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee’ ( Job 42:5), vision has for Job become the defining moment, and for Blake a key way of understanding the book as a whole.3 To use Blake’s words, the ‘daughters of memory’ give way to the ‘daughters of inspiration’,4 and convention and habit, in thrall to the accumulation of knowledge, yield to imaginative insight. Job’s understanding moves to another plane. Like Dürer before him, who relegated the text of the Book of Revelation to the reverse of his series of images, and even then only loosely related them to the pictures, Blake’s engravings prioritise the images. The engraved images are similar in most ways to those we see in the watercolours, but with the addition of the marginal biblical citations and further vignettes, the surrounding biblical, textual comment is often small. The primary focus of interest, the image, is at the centre surrounded by the various texts. Blake wanted us to engage with the totality of his engraved ‘text’ but not by focussing on the words to such an extent that we lose sight of the prime place given to the images, which are the central panel in every engraving. Thus, like the watercolours, the engravings prioritise the image (Fisch 1999: 291). Yet with the engravings one finds oneself gravitating to the words to explain the pictures rather than letting the reverse process take place, so that the watercolours are a necessary reminder of the importance of Job 42:5. Blake’s composite art does not represent words in pictures and pictures in words, so much as two very different media juxtaposed, in which the complex relationship invites us as readers and viewers into the process of exegesis. Readers of Blake’s work will recognise a conundrum for anyone who writes on this subject: how best to communicate a taste of the interpretative process, so subtle and inventive, found in, and prompted by, the prints and illuminated books. Blake wishes to prompt us to a personal revelation through viewing his

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images. Any exegetical analysis of his work must complement, not be at odds with, this goal. The method adopted here, of interpreting elements in the Job sequence by reference to other Blake images, presupposes a particular, modern approach to Blake (Fuller 1988: 224–81). We who are readers of Blake are in a very different position from those who engaged with the engravings without any recourse to the rest of the corpus. Blake did not, of course, assume that his readers/viewers would depend on the kind of access that modern interpreters have to his other works. He would not have taken kindly to the idea that only an ‘expert’ could explain his engravings. After all, his work is executed and designed to ‘rouze the faculties to act’, whether they be faculties of experts or amateurs. All can read and discern their ‘minute particulars’. My discussion of the series in the following two chapters starts by considering what any reader would be able to glean from each engraving viewed singly and also in the context of the series. Thus the application of my method involves starting with what Blake terms ‘minute particulars’. It is only then followed by a detailed analysis which extends to images and themes from the rest of the Blake corpus, and also from other parts of the Bible. This method is comparative, using the further images to support an interpretation of the series which began with the engravings themselves. In this way, beginning from the particulars of the engravings, the crucial elements of Blake’s biblical exegesis may be discerned. The resulting interpretation of the Book of Job offers a heuristic lens to view Blake’s theology and interpretation of the Bible as a whole. EXEGESIS

OF THE

BOOK

AN EPITOME OF

JOB IN HIS ENGRAVINGS: BLAKE’S APPROACH

OF

The dominant interpretation of the Book of Job in modern biblical scholarship has been that Job is a victim of undeserved suffering, a situation which makes it difficult to believe in God’s goodness (Clines 1989). Blake’s reading is different. He is not interested in the sort of rationale for belief in God that was prompted, for example, by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 (referred to by Blake in his ‘Annotations to Watson’s Apology’ 7; E615; see above, p. 8). Despite his desire ‘To Justify the Ways of God to Men’, expressed in the Epigraph to Milton (E95; cf. the opening of Milton’s Paradise Lost 1:26), his is never a conventional approach to justifying belief. Instead he desires to show how vision can cleanse ‘the doors of perception’ (MHH 14, E39) and can wean a viewer away from the simplistic theological nostrum that if one acts justly and accepts received wisdom one will be rewarded. Hence the resonance for him of the Book of Job,

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where he finds an opportunity to criticise a theology which places supreme value on what is found in a book and to promote ‘the Word of God Universal’ (Annotations to Watson’s Apology, E615), by which he means a religion of divine immanence, rooted in the Gospel of John and challenging a view of God as a transcendent moral arbiter. This is a religion, moreover, in which experience, not uncritical acceptance of the wisdom of tradition, is the motor of theological and ethical change. To Blake, Job is a victim of habit and lack of awareness of the way in which the ‘memory’ of received wisdom has informed his life. He presents Job as a pious ‘man of the book’, righteous in terms of the Law. Eliphaz articulates the consequence of this position: a man who is suffering cannot be righteous ( Job 4:7 cf 4:17). This may have been Job’s initial, unredeemed theological position also ( Job 1:5; 42:5). Blake’s understanding of Job’s redemption focuses on two key texts: ‘I have heard thee with the hearing of the Ear but now my Eye seeth thee’ (Blake’s version of Job 42:5), and ‘So the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends’ (42:10). The first demonstrates an epistemological, the second an ethical, change, and they stand as a paradigm for similar existential change in Blake’s readers as they engage with his exegesis. Blake’s reading of Job’s story is one of personal upheaval in which the past is taken up and read differently in the light of the apocalyptic vision (Bindman 1977:209–14). Job, perfect and upright ( Job 1:1, cf Phil 3:6), comes to a new theological understanding on the basis of vision ( Job 42:5; cf. Gal 1:12 and 16). What really matters is that Job, with perception cleansed, now views his relationship with life and with the whole of creation very differently. Also, the return in Engraving 21 to a state in some ways similar to that shown in Engraving 1 suggests that the experience recounted in image and text in the Job series is not a ‘one off ’ but may have to be repeated throughout a life which can degenerate into the state summarised by the words ‘Thus did Job continually’ ( Job 1:5). The Eliphaz and Elihu engravings (Engravings 9 and 12), as well as the nightmare experience of Job (Engraving 11) and Job’s meeting with God, in different ways bear witness to the importance of dreams and visions in Blake’s reading of the Book of Job. This irruption of the imaginative into the habits of religion is of crucial importance. Blake’s exegetical insight focuses on the few passages about visions and dreams, which then become an interpretative framework for his reading of the Book of Job as a whole. The visionary, or apocalyptic, theme of the Job series is very important.5

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17

In Job 1–2 the reader is given a glimpse into the activities of the heavenly court, alongside the earthly realm, thereby contrasting the world above and the world below. This is brought out in the early engravings of the sequence. In the interpretation of the theophany (chs 38–41) Job discerns the divine is with (and in!) humans (cf. John 14:17, 20; J34:20–1, E180). It is true that the cosmological picture, in which God is enthroned in heaven above, makes an appearance again later in the sequence, in the depiction of ‘The Fall of Satan’ and in those engravings where Job and his wife are granted a privileged view of the created world. But they can now see the world with new eyes (especially Engravings 14–16). The removal of the division between heaven and earth reflects a major theme of the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, in which the divide between heaven and earth, the age to come and this age, is only a temporary phenomenon. At the climax of his vision John sees a new heaven and a new earth; but in the new creation the contrasts of the old creation have gone; heaven is no longer the dwelling place of the holy God separated from humanity, for God now dwells on earth (Rev. 21:3). Blake expresses this ultimate situation even more inclusively in Jerusalem when he writes, ‘Heaven, Earth & Hell henceforth shall live in harmony’ (J3, E145). In the Job series (as is the case with John 1:14) the recognition of the communion of the human and divine is seen as something which is possible in this life. In Engraving 17, God and humanity combine, and this is interpreted as a vision of Christ (Lindberg 1973: 86–90). To use the language of Revelation 22:4, not only do humans ‘see God face to face’ but the divine name is on their heads and they participate in the divine glory: ‘we shall be like him’, writes the author of 1 John 3:2. Harold Fisch puts it as follows: according to Blake’s radical reading of the Gospel, Incarnation signifies nothing less than the abolishing of all distinction between man and God; God dissolves in man and no otherness is left to command us, to question us, or to affright us. (Fisch 1999: 310)

In the Job sequence Job’s understanding of God changes from transcendent monarch exalted in heaven to immanent divine presence, with and in him, thus reversing the view of God implicit in the opening words of the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Our Father which art in Heaven’, printed on Plate 2 (and also on the first of the Butts watercolours). In Engravings 17 and 18 the contents of the books are actually seen by the reader (hitherto we have seen only the form of the books, on the lap of God or

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of Job and his wife, Engravings 1 and 2), and key verses are written on both books and scrolls. In Engraving 17 the book’s quotations relate to Job’s vision of God, the divine in human. ‘Hearing of the Ear’ is subordinate to seeing with ‘my Eye’, as the words serve more as a comment on what is seen. In Engraving 18 the book contains words which suggest that Job’s liberation finally comes through

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2.1 Title page of Illustrations of The Book of Job.

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his act of forgiveness when he prays for his friends. The decisive moment comes when Job practises love of enemies, and at that moment ‘The Lord turned the captivity of Job’ (Moskal 1994:150). The upheaval in Job’s life broadens his perspective so that imaginative experience and the practice of charity complement a theology based on reading holy books and the good works which the moral law prescribes. Finally, in Engraving 20, we see Job bequeathing to his daughters an experience rooted in the events of his life. Title page (2.1) Blake entitles what he has engraved as Illustrations of the Book of Job. It would be tempting to suppose that the title applies solely to the images, but surely it makes more sense to assume that this refers to the whole production: the images juxtaposed with the anthology of texts, the whole offering a hermeneutical guide. The prominent place given to the words ‘The Book of Job’ indicates that Blake may well have wanted what followed to be regarded as the book itself as it should be read. Blake shows off his Hebrew. Here there is little to comment on except to note the slightly strange writing of the aleph (Spector 1990: 179–229). He describes the engravings as published in ‘London: Published as the Act directs March 8 1825 by William Blake No 3 Fountain Court, Strand’. The images of seven angels surround the book in a semi-circle, the number seven because of its biblical resonance (Paley 2003: 231–2), particularly the links between the angels and the seven eyes of God (Heppner 1995:186–8). They parallel the depiction of the heavenly host in ‘The Annunciation of the Shepherds’ (Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, B538 2) and ‘God Blessing the Seventh Day’ (B434). In both instances the angels move round in a circular motion, reminiscent of the circular motion that suggests the movement of ‘Ezekiel’s Wheels’ in the watercolour of Ezekiel’s Chebar vision (Boston Museum of Art, B468, Bindman 1977: 142, below, p. 141). Engraving 1: Job’s initial state (2.2) Job and his wife, in pious pose, both with books open on their laps, are surrounded by their children. We do not know the identity of these books (nor will we know what is written in the books until Engravings 17 and 18), though we may surmise that they are Bibles. The sun is setting and the moon rising. This contrasts with the last picture of the sequence, in which the sun is rising and the moon waning. On the left is a church in gothic style. Given Blake’s approval of gothic architecture one might see this as evidence of ‘the persistent availability

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of vision’ even at this early stage of the narrative (Paley 2003: 232), but vision at this juncture is eclipsed by Job’s habitual pattern of life. The large tree is probably an oak, as it is in the last engraving of the series, which is closely related to the first engraving (we may note that the tree on which Jesus hangs in J76 is also an oak). In the light of Europe A Prophecy – ‘There stand the venerable porches that high-towering rear/Their oak-surrounded pillars, form’d of massy stones, uncut/With tool; stones precious, such eternal in the heavens’ (Europe 10:6–8; K241, E63) – the oak may be a sign of an obsolescent,

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2.2 Job’s initial state.

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druidic religion of human sacrifice, which Blake so often criticised (Ghost of Abel 2:16, E272; J98:48–50, E258 and the link between the oak and the Angel of the Divine Presence in ‘A Vision of the Last Judgment’, E559). This is often a backdrop of the Job engravings (most obviously in Engravings 5–8). According to Blake, Adam and the biblical patriarchs were druids (Descriptive Catalogue, 41, E542–3): Adam was a Druid, and Noah; also Abraham was called to succeed the Druidical age, which began to turn allegoric and mental signification into corporeal command, whereby human sacrifice would have depopulated the earth.6

The musical instruments are on the tree. One can imagine a cheerless religious occasion, at which music is banned and the focus is the divine word confined to the Bible. Unbeknown to Job at this stage, this is a place of captivity. Like the Jewish exiles in Babylon, who hung their harps on the tree, Job and his family did not know how to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land (Psa 137:2–4; Fisch 1999: 293 draws attention to the painting ‘By the Waters of Babylon’, 1806: Fogg Museum, Harvard, B466, where instruments hang on the tree, further Johnson 1990: 144–6). The parameters of the engraving consist of a rectangle within which there is a tent-like, pentagonal shape surrounding the image. The iconographical similarity between Engravings 1 and 21 suggests that Job remains inside the framework of life after his experience, and so within the limits of human perception, even when these have been cleansed through the dramatic experiences that are depicted. The canopy-like tent is reminiscent of the way in which divine appearances are depicted, for example, in both ‘The Four and Twenty Elders’ (Tate Gallery, London, B515) and the unfinished ‘Enoch before the Great Glory’ (the fifth of the Enoch sketches, National Gallery of Art, Washington, B827 4; see below, p. 115). The tent-like shape might hint at the tabernacle, something confirmed by the presence of the sacrificial altar in a central place in the bottom margin of the first and last engravings. In addition, in the bottom corners of the engraving there are the heads of an ox and a ram. At the top, outside the pentagon, are the opening words of the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name’ (Matthew 6:9). Lindberg suggests that these may be the words which Job is reading from the open book (Lindberg 1973:57). These words are written in what seems to be an evocation of clouds, in an ethereal space, and imply a theological stance which Blake would have wanted to question, because of their emphasis on

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divine transcendence. They may also be part of the habitual religion in which Job engaged, vain repetitions condemned in Matthew 6:7 (so Wright 1972:5; Lindberg 1973:195). In due course the religion will be replaced with a theology, inspired by Matthew 1:23, ‘God with us’, on earth, and the practice of the forgiveness of sins, rather than a divinity located in heaven above requiring sacrifice for sin. The reference to the opening of the Lord’s Prayer indicates the problem rather than its solution (so also Ferber 1985:70) and is a reminder that in Blake’s work there is no neat contrast between the Old and New Testaments, for both equally could be sources of vision and sources of oppression. Throughout the series Blake seeks to criticise any pattern of religion that has at its centre scriptural literalism and devotion to a transcendent deity. As Frye puts it, ‘the same contrast between law and gospel is found in Christianity itself ’ (Frye 1947: 342). Job thinks of God solely ‘in heaven’. In the paraphrase which Blake offered of the Lord’s Prayer, round about the same time as he was doing the Job engravings, he wrote: ‘Jesus our Father who art in Heaven call’d by thy Name the Holy Ghost’ (Annotations to Thornton’s ‘Lord’s Prayer’ 3; E668, cf. ‘Know that after Christ’s death, he became Jehovah’, MHH6, E35). Beneath the image is a quotation from the Book of Job: ‘Thus did Job continually’ (1:5), and the opening words of the book are printed on either side of an altar, topped either side with rams’ heads (Exod 27:2). In the middle of this are quoted words from 2 Cor 3: 6: ‘the Letter Killeth The Spirit giveth Life’, and the words ‘It is Spiritually Discerned’ come from 1 Cor 2:14, part of one of the most remarkable passages in the Pauline corpus, stressing the indwelling Spirit rather than tradition or books as the foundation of theological knowledge. It is a passage which was a favourite for those of an antinomian bent (it lies behind various comments Blake made about the interpretation of the Bible, e.g. BR431, 434–5 and below, p. 204), and which Blake’s spiritual ancestor Jacob Boehme alludes to in Mysterium Magnum 67:11 (‘the prophetic spirit seeth through God’s seeing’, Fischer 2004: 55). At the time that Blake was creating the engravings he told Henry Crabb Robinson that ‘all he knew was in the Bible but then he understands by the Bible the spiritual sense’ (Lindberg 1973: 195, BR434). In the image we see Job with his wife, who throughout the series continues to play a major role. In some respects this is one of the most remarkable aspects of Blake’s treatment. Commentators have not been slow to make the comparison between Job’s wife and how Blake may have perceived his own wife, Catherine, as she stood by him through his trials (Bentley 2001:64–5, 69). Job’s wife stays

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with him in the dirt, agony and torment, unlike her behaviour in the biblical book where she urges Job to put himself out of his misery ( Job 2:9). The depiction of Job’s wife occasionally suggests that she interrogates Job (e.g. in Engraving 10). More often she is depicted as one who accompanies, showing patient endurance, without any suggestion, as in Job 2:9, that there might be some easy remedy for Job’s situation, whether in word (as there), or deed. Blake depicts Job being unaware of the solidarity in suffering that his wife demonstrates. Job is self-absorbed, totally preoccupied with his pain, but the artist wants the viewer to see what Job himself cannot. It is no surprise that when the vale of tears has been negotiated Job’s wife is also in the divine light along with Job himself (Engraving 17). The description of the image as ‘Thus did Job continually’ suggests a note of reproach on the artist’s part (so also Paley 2003: 233), especially so in the light of what Job later comes to learn about a religion of law (Engraving 11). This is reinforced by the fact that the end of the series has him abandoning the books. It is the adherence to memory and tradition, unquestioning, ‘continually’ and mechanically that is the problem (just as Urizen copies unthinkingly from his books in the frontispiece to ‘The First Book of Urizen’, below, p. 98). What Blake depicts is a scene that is less idyllic than it looks. In his view, perfection and uprightness, fearing God and eschewing evil were not the ideal: it is precisely from that pattern of existence that Job needs to be liberated. What he has to learn is that spiritual discernment is crucial, not preoccupation with the letter of the Bible and its application. Liberation is hinted at in the strategically placed reference to 2 Cor 3:6, part of which is quoted in the engraving: ‘Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life’ (a favourite verse of Gerrard Winstanley, e.g. Saints Paradice 6, CHL i.343, 369). It points forward to the very different kind of understanding after Job’s ‘doors of perception are cleansed’ (MHH14, E39). It means leaving behind obsession with the letter of the text.7 Engraving 2: Satan and the sons of God before the divine throne (2.2a) In this engraving the surrounds of the rectangle within which the picture is placed include hints of pastoral life, with a shepherd and various kinds of birds, and what appear to be branches of trees arching into a gothic-like lattice. The earthly scene is complemented by a heavenly scene, with the Almighty seated, akin to Job in the first engraving, encircled with light (similar to the encircling round the Ancient of Days at the beginning of Europe) and resembling Job.

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According to Lindberg, the head of the Almighty is already beginning to take a similar form to that which it will take in Plate 11 (Lindberg 1973: 204). The horned appearance of the divinity’s hair resembles one of the Enoch sketches (B827 5). The Almighty too has a book open on his lap, and he is pointing downwards to the heavenly host, and to Job and his family, who mirror in their activity what is going on in the heavenly world. God is surrounded with a billowing black cloud, which is illumined by a halo of light. Immediately below God and around the divine throne are the heavenly host. They appear to be offering books and scrolls. There is the same interplay of, and preoccupation with, books and scrolls in heaven as on earth. In the midst of the dance of the angels, there are the faces of a man and a woman, possibly Job’s and his wife’s, reflected in heaven. That intimate link between human and divine is even more striking in Engraving 5. The notion that the human might be linked with the enthroned God is very much part of Jewish interpretation, where the patriarchs’, especially Jacob’s, features are linked with the divine throne.8 The scene of pastoral tranquillity is dominated by a rather bookish ethos, as the heavenly host and on earth Job and his family study the books and the scrolls. Job seems to be pointing out some detail, and the angels seem to be attentive to this upright man’s exposition. He is the authoritative, patriarchal, teacher to whom his wife gives due attention. Job, however, is focused on this world rather than heaven above where the Almighty is shrouded in ‘clouds and thick darkness’. The heavenly scene is a depiction of that captured by Blake in his famous parody on the transcendent divinity: ‘To Nobodaddy’ Why art thou silent & invisible Father of Jealousy Why dost thou hide thyself in clouds From every searching Eye Why darkness & obscurity In all thy words & laws That none dare eat the fruit but from The wily serpents jaws Or is it because Secresy gains females loud applause (E471)

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2.2a Satan and the sons of God before the divine throne.

Among the ‘sons of God’ surrounding the enthroned divinity, is Satan, in a pose reminiscent of the fiery spiritual being whose image dominates the third plate of ‘Urizen’ (noted by Lindberg 1973:20–2). In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake wrote, ‘But in the Book of Job, Milton’s Messiah is call’d Satan’ (Plate 5, E34). The caption for the Job image is ‘When the Almighty was yet with me, When my Children were about me’ ( Job 29:5). In these words, Job seems to look back to a time when everything seemed to be well. His image of God was as Almighty,

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benevolently watching over him with his wife and children around him. The activity in the image is related to Job 2:1 (in very small print at the bottom of the page). Presenting themselves seems to mean that the angels, or sons of God, present to God books and scrolls. At the top-centre of the engraving are three biblical passages, ‘I beheld the Ancient of Days’ from Dan 7:9, ‘Hast thou considered my Servant Job’, from Job 1:8, and the words, ‘The Angel of the Divine Presence’, (mlk YHWH). They are flanked by the words, ‘I shall see God’ and ‘Thou art our Father’, and around them all ‘We shall awake up [sic] in thy Likeness’. The words ‘We shall awake up in thy Likeness’ are loosely based on Psalm 17:15 (‘As for me I will behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness’). The words ‘I shall see God’, from Job 19:26, pointing forward to Engravings 13 and 17, are written in the cloud on the left at the top, and on the opposite side, words from Isaiah 63:16 (the same chapter as the reference to the Angel of the Divine Presence) and 64:8: ‘Thou art our father’. The Angel of the Divine Presence (Isa 63:9 ‘the angel of his presence’) appears in several Blake works (‘A Vision of the Last Judgment’, where Blake identifies ‘That Angel of the Divine Presence with ‘the Angel of God’ in Exod 14:19, E559; Milton 32:11, E131; Laocoön, E273, ‘The Everlasting Gospel’, E521–2, and in the image ‘The Angel of the Divine Presence clothing Adam and Eve with coats of skin’, 1803, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, B436, Lindberg 1973: 203–4; Paley 2003: 93–5; 191–2).9 As we shall see in Chapter 4, this angel is a significant figure in the early biblical books of the Hebrew Bible. In the Laocoön (E273), with its mixture of picture and aphorisms, probably dating from around 1826, the caption is: ‘Yah & his two sons Satan & Adam’. Not only is there a reference to ‘The Angel of the Divine Presence’, but also the Hebrew, (mal’ak YHWH) is written correctly with the aleph, and so different from the Job engraving (even if the aleph is inscribed backwards). This adds weight to the suggestion that the absence of the aleph in the Job engraving may well have been deliberate (Spector 1990: 202). In the Laocoön the way in which the serpent intertwines the Angel of the Presence, Satan and Adam parallels Job’s situation in the nightmare experience we find in Engraving 11. As we have seen, ‘The Angel of the Divine Presence’ is not a translation of mal’ak YHWH. What Blake actually writes, however, is mlk YHWH ( ). The omission of an aleph from mal’ak YHWH ( ) yields mlk YHWH. This is a brilliant piece of ambiguity. While the phrase is closely linked with the English ‘The Angel of the Divine Presence’ in the image, it actually

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means ‘Yahweh is king’ (appropriate as God is enthroned in majesty),10 or ‘Yahweh is Moloch’, a god of the neighbouring nations who required children to be offered as a sacrifice and whose worship is widely criticised in the Hebrew Bible (Lev 18:21; 20:2–5; 2 Kings 23:10; Jer 32:35). Could Blake have been hinting at this in his reproduction of the Hebrew? If the enthroned divinity is Moloch-like it could hint at the pagan religion which is present in the later engravings when Blake depicts druidic stones and shrines, but it is not an inappropriate description of the divinity who allows Job’s children to perish in fire (Engraving 3). According to Blake, druid religion was the religion of the patriarchs and involved child sacrifice (e.g. Jerusalem 27:30–3, E172; 65:63, E217). Abraham manifested such religiosity when he was tempted to sacrifice his son (Genesis 22), and it was this kind of religion which was the inherited practice of Job and was the background for his life. Blake probably knew that Moloch is one of the rebel angels who speaks in a militant way in Paradise Lost 2:43–105. The link between Moloch and child-sacrifice led Blake to see Moloch as a god who demanded sacrifice of children through war (M37:20–5, E137).11 We have already noted the similarity with perhaps Blake’s most famous image, ‘The Ancient of Days’ (cf. Dan 7:9, Preface to Europe A Prophecy). This last at first sight offers a view of divinity who measures and organises.12 But this view is complemented in ‘The Ancient of Days’ by another, crucially important, element. There is clearly a wind from outside the picture blowing from the east, from the right as the viewer looks at the picture. The east is the direction whence the messiah, the Morning Star, will come (cf. Luke 1:78 and Rev 22:16) and the messianic east wind is blowing the solitary deity’s hair. In Ezek 43 the divine glory comes from the east to the new Jerusalem (Ezek 43: 2–3). The Spirit disturbs the neat order of the organising deity. The ‘Energy’ of the divine Spirit, however, despite the fact that it is ‘the only Life’, requires order and rationality to articulate it and give it form: ‘Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy’ (MHH4, E34).13 Whereas in Engraving 1 we were shown an earthly scene, here heaven and earth are juxtaposed and their inhabitants intermingle, and in some ways mirror each other. The parallels between Job and the Almighty are noticeable, and will be even more so in Engraving 5. The waking up in God’s likeness (Engraving 2, Psa 17:15), however, will only come after the night of tormented dreams, when Job will wake to see God face to face, and come to know that the divine face is his own also. The way in which Blake links human and divine features is a theme which is very much at the heart of New

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Testament eschatology. Passages like 1 John 3:2–3 indicate that both seeing and becoming like the one who is seen are central for the understanding of the fulfilment of the future hope (cf. Rev 22:3–5). When he awakes in God’s likeness, Job will not only see God face to face but also see the world and all its inhabitants differently and more importantly recognise the divinity in his own humanity. Job enacts what Blake wrote on the concluding plates of There is No Natural Religion: . . . He who sees the In/finite in all things/sees God. He who/sees the Ratio only/sees himself only/Therefore/God becomes as/we are, that we/may be as he/is. (There is No Natural Religion, Plates b11–12, E3)

What is most striking about Engraving 2 is its cosmology. Here, and elsewhere in the sequence, Blake picks up on the cosmological elements which are present, particularly in the opening chapters of the biblical Job, and throughout his own reading of Job. The contrast between heaven and earth is a crucial element, and in this he anticipates, remarkably, some of the insights of modern biblical study, which point to the apocalyptic elements in Job, both in the opening and closing chapters and also in the importance attached to dreams and visions (Knibb 1982; Stone 1990). Engraving 3: catastrophe strikes Job’s sons and daughters (2.3) The next few engravings keep more closely to the text of the Book of Job. Job 1:18–19 describes the catastrophe which befell the house in which Job’s sons and daughters are eating and drinking. This verse is the caption under the picture of death and destruction as columns fall. A young man with a child on his shoulder clings to someone in the rubble, while a bat-winged demon crouches on one of the falling columns seemingly presiding over the death and destruction. The figure resembles the adult male figure in Engraving 2, who sits behind Job’s left shoulder holding a scroll. In the frame around the picture there are what appear to be flames and smoke, and the words, ‘The Fire of God is fallen from Heaven’ (1:16), and God’s words to Satan, ‘Behold All that he hath is in thy Power’ (1:12). On either side of the outer frame two scorpions reinforce the sense of torment which is now beginning. On the top of a column stands a batwinged demon, an image which has affinities with the main figure in ‘The Flight of Moloch’ (Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, B538 5; Davies 1990: 3–40). What is striking about this engraving is the similarity between the centrally placed figure rescuing the children and the figure in the final plate of Europe

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2.3 Catastrophe strikes Job’s sons and daughters.

(Paley 2003: 236; cf. also the similarity of the destruction of the children with Blake’s ‘Pestilence’, Museum of Fine Art, Boston, B442). In Europe the figure moves from right to left with a woman’s corpse over his right shoulder, and there are flames moving across the picture in the same direction. There, the destruction has happened. In Job it is a child on the shoulder, and the fire seems to proceed from Satan, and we witness the cataclysm as it happens.

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The setting in Europe is in a very different context, in which Blake the prophet describes the ‘strife of blood’ let loose as the result of the French Revolution. There is, of course, a revolution that is described in Job’s life, but according to Blake’s reading of Job it is primarily affecting the individual, whereas in Europe it is social and political. So, as compared with the final plate of Europe A Prophecy, the focus is on the psychological revolution. The bleak ending of Europe portrays hope: an acorn is depicted at the end of the poem, suggesting that there may after all be seeds of hope in the revolution as well as ‘the strife of blood’. In this particular plate of the Job sequence the marginal signs have few images of hope, only scorpions, fire and thick cloud. Engraving 4: the messenger comes to Job (2.4) Job and his wife are confronted by the messenger with the words ‘And I only am escaped alone to tell thee’ ( Job 1:16). Job’s head is turned upwards, his gaze directed at a winged figure with the sword, which is outside the frame of the image (cf. MHH14, E39). This probably echoes Genesis 3:24 and Ezek 28:14, 16. Words from Job 1:14 and 7 surround the winged, sword-carrying figure. The fact that the words ‘Going to & fro in the Earth & walking up & down in it’ ( Job 2:2 cf. 1:7) are printed on either side of this figure suggests Satan as well. The way to the tree of life is guarded by a divine being who prevents Job and his family from the life of Paradise (Ezek 28:16). The similarity of this figure to that found in the sombre image in ‘Europe’ plate 7(8) possibly suggests that it is the exposure of Job to a form of religion which excludes the life of the imagination, a religion which Blake believed bedevilled Europe. Job’s wife raises her hands above her head in a pose of supplication. They are both still seated under the tree, but also behind two massive pillars which will become a feature of several of the next engravings in the series, and probably indicate the pagan religion to which they have hitherto subscribed. The cry of the messenger ‘I only’ ( Job 1:17) is at odds with other parts of the image, for behind him there is a naked person running by a bespired gothic church, looking towards the lamenting Job, possibly a herald of other misfortunes (Lindberg 1973:214, possibly a reference to other messengers in 1:14, 16, though also reminding the attentive reader of Mark 14:51–2). Engraving 5: Satan goes forth from the divine presence (2.5) Here we are back with the dualistic cosmology in which the viewer is offered a glimpse of the contrasting scenes in heaven and on earth. ‘Then went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord’ ( Job 1:12), to focus the fire of the heavenly

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2.4 The messenger comes to Job.

host, surrounding the enthroned Almighty, onto Job. Satan’s angelic, ministering, role is stressed in the quotation from Hebrews 1:14, below the main caption. The Almighty sits, face averted, with a closed book in his right hand and a scroll in his left, and as the centrally placed comment puts it ‘And it grieved him at his heart’ (Gen 6:6), indicating divine pity alongside the disaster that has befallen Job, though with the divine permission. Round the edge of the image is

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2.5 Satan goes forth from the divine presence.

a tree interweaving with a snake, whose head views what happens in the picture, with eye firmly fixed on Job (cf. Gen 4:7 where Sin ‘lieth at the door’). Two angels stand guard at the top of the picture averting their gaze (just as in ‘The Fall of Satan’ in Engraving 16 the cherubs around God cover their faces with their hands), thereby mirroring the pose of the Almighty in the main image. A column is apparent over Job’s wife’s right shoulder, reminding us of Blake’s

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desire to link the pre-Abrahamic religion and the religion of the Druids. As in ‘God Judging Adam’ (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1795, B295), the image of the human and the divine closely resemble each other. What is most striking in the image of Engraving 5 is the expression on Job’s face. As he doles out the bread for the paupers ( Job 30:25), who are in receipt of his charity, his expression is an almost exact replica of that on the face of the Almighty. Job tilts his head in the opposite direction to that of God, and Job’s wife likewise shows her sympathy with Job, by tilting her head in the same direction towards the poor man and his dog (picking up the crumbs from the rich man’s table’; Luke 16:21 cf. Mark 7:28). The impulse to do good to others in the new life that Job leads after his conversion, when he himself is also open to acts of charity, replaces the sense of external obligation depicted here (Engraving 19). The Almighty seems to grieve for what is going on and averts his gaze from the activity of Satan (cf. Gen 6:6). Similarly, in Engraving 16 the sad expression of God suggests that the theological framework which had held Job in its power is at an end when Satan, the Almighty’s agent, is seen by Job as part of the celestial bondage of humanity. In the previous scene God had been seated, impassively, book open on his lap, similar to the tiara-crowned, bat-winged demon king in Europe 12 (14). Now the book is closed in one hand, and a scroll is in the other. In the last engraving we shall see the book gone from the human scene though it is still there in the ‘Fall of Satan’. The pose of the Almighty anticipates the decentring of the book and the adoption of the less weighty and portentous scroll. The look of sadness suggests the end of the dominance of the book religion, as the effects of it are made apparent to Job in the dreams of the night. The sad look on the face of the Almighty mirrors Job’s face and expresses sadness for Job’s tribulation. Given that Blake wants us to attend to ‘minute particulars’, may the different positions given to the two feet, one above the other, suggest the relative priority of two different aspects of the divine person? One is higher than the other: Is it justice or is it mercy that comes to the fore here in the clash of contraries that is crucial for progression in Job’s life (‘without contraries is no progression’, MHH3, E34)? Engraving 6: Satan smiting Job with boils (2.6) We now see the consequence of the funnelling of the divine fire and the way in which Job is afflicted in the smiting by Satan ( Job 2:7). The depiction of Satan resembles other Blake images, such as ‘The Spiritual Form of Nelson guiding Leviathan’ (1805–9; Tate Gallery, London, B 649; cf. ‘The Spiritual Form of

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Pitt guiding Behemoth’, 1805, B651), and ‘Albion Rose’ (1794; British Museum, B262; Bindman 1977: 163–4, Paley 2003: 239). Satan treads Job underfoot while Job’s wife kneels nearby with her head in her hands. The dark billowing clouds of heaven, and the odd druidical column, form the backdrop. In the left-hand corner we have, again, the setting sun, reminding us that this is the beginning of Job’s dark night of the soul, but also the end of the period of his

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2.6 Satan smiting Job with boils.

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subservience to the religion which had held him in bondage without his knowledge. The engraving is grimmer than the watercolour versions. Job’s wife is much darker and appears to be suffering terribly, helpless in the face of her partner’s solitary agony. Around the borders of the main image are two winged angels each holding a thread from which dangle spiders. The single thread is a reminder that the web or net of religion is becoming attenuated for Job even as his afflictions begin (cf. Urizen 25:22, E82; the illustration in ‘The Human Abstract’, E27; and Europe 14/15). Along the bottom, under the main image, can be seen a broken pot (cf. Eccles 12:5–6), and a locust, with what appears to be the head of a snake viewing Job’s afflictions from the earth. In Job 2:8 we read ‘he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat down among the ashes’. The presence of the locust may be a sign of the judgement (1 Kings 8:37), as much on Job’s former life as on Job himself. Lindberg (1973: 37) points out the way in which this passage from the Book of Job is alluded to in Jerusalem, where Albion says with Job’s words: The disease of Shame covers from head to feet. I have no hope. Every boil upon my body is a separate & deadly Sin. Doubt first assail’d me, then Shame took possession of me. Shame divides Families, Shame hath divided Albion in sunder. First fled my Sons & then my Daughters, then my Wild Animations, My Cattle next, last ev’n the Dog of my Gate; the Forests fled, The Corn-fields & the breathing Gardens outside separated, The Sea, the Stars, the Sun, the Moon, driv’n forth by my disease. ( J21:3–10, punctuation Keynes 643, E166)

Across the top of the image the words of Job 1:21 assert that joy and sorrow alike come from the Almighty. Engraving 7: Job’s comforters (2.7) The three comforters now appear with hands raised aloft. Job is exhausted. His wife is in attendance, with hands in a pose suggesting inability to know how to attend to him, in amazement and perhaps horror. The main caption comes from Job 2:12, and the image reflects the words. Job’s wife’s different pose reflects the fact that the words of 2:10 are quoted above the picture. Here Job’s reply (interestingly, Job’s wife’s words in 2:9 are not quoted) leaves his wife apparently aghast at his patience. Of the three comforters only one looks at Job. The other

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two address heaven. The druidical buildings are in the centre and dominate the background. The words ‘What! shall we recieve Good at the hand of God & shall we not also recieve Evil’ ( Job 2:10) remind one that contraries are emphatically part of theological and human existence: Man was made for Joy & Woe And when this we rightly know

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2.7 Job’s comforters.

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Thro the World we safely go Joy & Woe are woven fine A Clothing for the soul divine (‘Auguries of Innocence’, E491)

The marginal drawings have figures (not obviously angels this time) averting their gaze. The words in smaller print at the bottom come from James 5:11, ‘Ye have heard of the Patience of Job and have seen the end of the Lord’, so Job’s final destiny is hinted at in these words. Engraving 8: Job’s despair (2.8) The three comforters and Job’s wife here take a different pose, kneeling, heads in hands, as Job, hands raised to heaven and cursing the day he was born but not the Almighty, utters the words ‘Let the Day perish wherein I was Born!’ ( Job 3:3). A stone edifice forms an immediate backdrop, with dark mountains and clouds in the distance. Gone is the light behind the mountains evident in the previous image. In the margins are verses from Job 3:7 and 2:13. At the bottom are various forms of fungi and wild flowers, as well as, possibly, thistles and briars, the ‘contraries’ of experience. In the midst of this cruel torment Job is slowly coming to terms with the briars which have bound his joys and desires (‘The Garden of Love’, Songs of Experience, E26), as he moves from that which cramps and constrains him to the liberation of the child of God (cf. Rom 8:21). Engraving 9: the vision of Eliphaz (2.9) In this engraving there is a return to the two-level cosmological presentation as Job, central to the image, his wife (along with one of the comforters bathed in light), and the two other comforters, look upwards. They see, swathed in dark clouds, a figure with halo-ed head appearing before a clearly startled, recumbent man (his hair is standing on end and his left hand is in a gesture which suggests that, whatever is before him, should come no closer). The haloheaded figure resembles the divinity who appears, in less frightening pose, to Job and his wife through the theophany of the whirlwind (Engraving 13). Around the central image is a mix of clouds in which the scriptural quotations are to be found, merging into branches of a tree (a weeping willow embracing the picture, reminiscent of the trees on the frontispiece of The First Book of Urizen). The words quoted as a caption are spoken by Eliphaz: ‘Then a Spirit passed before my face, the hair of my flesh stood up’ ( Job 4:15). Here he recounts a dream in

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2.8 Job’s despair.

which an apparition said ‘Shall mortal Man be more Just than God? Shall a Man be more Pure than his Maker? Behold he putteth no trust in his Saints & his Angels he chargeth with folly’ ( Job 4: 17–18, words printed round the top of the image).14 The difference between this and Engraving 17 is that when God as Christ appears to Job and his wife, he greets them with arms outstretched. Here the

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2.9 The vision of Eliphaz.

divinity is altogether more forbidding. Eliphaz reacts with fear. Eliphaz’s pose is that of Job in the previous engraving, with arms lifted up to heaven. Whereas in Job’s case it is a human appeal, based on the experience of his trials and tribulation, in Eliphaz’s case it is an appeal to heaven to validate the view that no mortal can be righteous before God ( Job 4:17). Job 4:14–15 are verses to which Blake refers in The French Revolution 128–31 (E291), where the Archbishop of Paris

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alludes to Eliphaz’s vision to add weight to his own report about his nocturnal experience, in the light of which he encourages the king to suppress popular protest (Lindberg 1973: 238).15 Just as the Archbishop, ecclesiastical representative of the ancien régime, correctly predicts what is to come, though he draws from it the conclusion that the king should act to maintain the status quo, Eliphaz in his vision articulates correctly one aspect of the divine. ‘This is a good-evil God, one of the curious mixtures of Blake’s double vision: half Satan, half Christ’ (so Lindberg 1973:238). In this image, one of the comforters lays claim to visionary experience to challenge Job, and to validate the various traditional views which are being expressed by the comforters. Eliphaz’s awful visionary experience points forward to Job’s own ‘vision and dream of the night’, depicted two engravings later. The difference between their experiences is that for Job it leads to the questioning and rejection of the theology of justice. This is not so with Eliphaz, who thinks that Job cannot be righteous, or he would not suffer. Even if Eliphaz persists in his theological confidence, Job has to see that the pursuit of justice is a theological cul-de-sac. The appeal to the dream experience does not serve Eliphaz’s cause. Indeed, the words quoted in 4:18 are in fact ambiguous with regard to the identity of the subject of the sentence: ‘Behold he putteth no trust in his Saints’. It could be Job who is right not to trust the saints, his ‘comforters’, because their ideas are inspired by the ‘daughters of memory’ rather than by ‘inspiration’. On the other hand, it could be that the Almighty has no trust in the fickleness of humanity, and the inability of any one born of flesh to be ‘more pure than his Maker’. The words ‘Shall mortal Man be more Just than God’ are crucial. Job’s experience will be that knowledge of God is not about justice. Indeed, Blake’s reading of the Book of Job places forgiveness of sins at the centre. Engraving 10: Job rebuked by comforters (2.10) The appeal to the visions of the night is now replaced by something altogether more accusatory: ‘the Just Upright Man is laughed to scorn’ (12:4). Job kneels, open-handed and vulnerable, with three comforters pointing accusing fingers at him (an image that is paralleled by the three accusers of Socrates in the picture at the top of J93). His wife sits beside him, wondering how her husband is going to react to the scorn that is being poured on him. The dark mountains and the stone column return to the image, though the column is on the left, from the viewer’s perspective, suggesting that, like the setting sun (the light behind the mountains is in the west), it is to be part of that which is going to disappear from the scene.

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2.10 Job rebuked by comforters.

A figure in the margin poses with an arm stretched over the scene, perhaps imitating the pose of the comforters. There is a chain down each side, and at the foot are two birds, one obviously an owl. Perhaps the two birds represent night and day, the owl being the night bird, and the other giving voice to its song at dawn, both indicating the joy and woe which attend humanity, flourishing like a flower and fleeing like a shadow ( cf. Job 14:2). Human mortality is expressed in

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the words from Job 14:1: ‘Man that is born of a Woman is of few days & full of trouble’. A more positive statement about Job is offered in the words above the image, in which his trials are seen as therapeutic (23:10). Job’s faith is certain (13:15), and there is a plea to his friends to pity him instead of being reproachful, by which they only add to his afflictions (19:21, a chapter which will form the heart of the next engraving).

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‘But now my eye seeth thee’ The biblical hermeneutics of Blake’s Job engravings: Part II

Engraving 11: Job’s nightmare (3.1) This extraordinary image sees the natural and supernatural worlds coincide in a gruesome image of torment. Job lies on his bed and wards off a horrific figure. It has the head of an old man, with hair on end in the shape of a star, cloven hooves, and legs intertwined with a large snake. The appearance of the apparition is a complex mix of images (the cloven hooves and the transcendent, patriarchal divinity). ‘God’ seems both ‘a Satan and a Saviour’ (Lindberg 1973: 204). Both hands of the strange figure are outstretched, the right pointing to the tablets of stone, the left to the inferno below Job’s pallet. Job is seemingly poised between obedience to the commandments inscribed on the stone tablets on the one hand and condemnation to the inferno on the other. Three figures seek to grasp the terrified Job and either pull him down or enchain him. Above the head of the fearsome man-beast are tablets of stone surrounded by lightning (similar to the depiction of the moment Eve eats the forbidden fruit in the Paradise Lost illustration of Eve’s temptation, 1808, Museum of Fine Art, Boston, B536 9). From the Butts watercolour version we see that the writing on the tablets, only vaguely discernible in the engraving, is part of the Decalogue in Hebrew script, starting with the words that end the fifth commandment, ‘which the Lord your God giveth thee’, and then going on to ‘Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery’ (Exod 20: 13–14; Spector 1990: 199–202, cf. Rembrandt’s use of Exod 20:13 in ‘Moses and the Law’, 1659). In the Butts watercolour the scaly appearance of the third of the figures on the bottom right reminds one of Moloch (‘The Flight of Moloch’, B538), the figure on Plate 7(8) Copy B of Europe, and the siren-like woman in the penultimate of the Enoch sketches (B827 3, below, p. 113). In the engraving the scales are evident on the arm of the left of the two other figures. The major caption in the engraving is loosely based on Job 7:14. Underneath is a longer quotation in smaller print, from 19:22–7. Below that is one of

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1x 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 38R

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3.1 Job’s nightmare.

two congruent quotations (2 Thess 2:4) from the New Testament, the other (2 Cor 11:14–15, with Job 20:5 above it) being immediately above the image. Both quotations relate to the identity of the figure which torments Job, seemingly an angel of light but in reality an agent of tribulation. At the top two corners of the image are verses from Job 30:17 and 30. The verses from Job 19:22–7 largely follow the KJV:

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Why do ye persecute me as God & are not satisfied with my flesh. Oh that my words were printed in a Book that they were graven with an iron pen & lead in the rock for ever For I know that my redeemer liveth & that he shall stand in the latter days upon the Earth & after my skin destroy thou This body yet in my flesh shall I see God whom I shall see for Myself and mine eyes shall behold & not Another tho consumed be my wrought Image

Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh? Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever! For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.

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Blake’s version marks a significant departure from both the English translations and the Hebrew text. The wording of the final clause ‘though consumed be my wrought Image’, in the Blake engraving, contrasts with the Authorised Version’s ‘though my reins be consumed within me’. These verses are notoriously difficult Hebrew. At first sight, it seems to be an invention on Blake’s part in which a transformation of Job’s image takes place (that is, if ‘my wrought Image’ applies to the person of Job). Such a transformation might parallel the change which took place in Job’s understanding of the image of God. Lindberg regards it as a version which still manages to grasp the meaning of the biblical passage. The phrase, he suggests, stands for the totality of being, the wrought image of what it means to be truly human (Lindberg 1973: 109). Nelms suggests the reference to ‘my wrought image’ is Job’s mistaken self-image which he must recognise concretely as he recognises the true nature of his false god, and which must be purged before redemption can take place. The terrifying divinity, therefore, is a crucial intermediary of what is, ultimately, for Job’s flourishing (Nelms 1970: 340–3). Job 19:25 is a verse which appears in Jerusalem (62:16 E213) in the context of the offer of unconditional forgiveness.1

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This image is reminiscent of ‘Elohim Creating Adam’ (Tate Gallery, 1795, B289; Fisch 1999: 301 B289) and ‘Christ’s Troubled Dream’ (from Paradise Regained, 1816–20, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, B544 8), where the sleeping Christ is confronted by a Urizenic, spectral Satan as he sleeps, surrounded by terrible serpents. In both his Job engraving and his ‘Elohim creating Adam’ pictures Blake challenges mainstream Christian theological tradition by having the snake entwining Adam’s legs, which suggests that Adam had the ‘satanic’ aspects of his character built into his nature from the beginning, rather than its being a consequence of the Fall. In Job the image goes a step further with the deity now unmasked as ‘Satan himself is transformed into an Angel of Light’ (2 Cor 11:14). This engraving brings us face to face with the complexities of Blake’s theology. Blake begins his quotation with Job’s words: ‘Why do ye persecute me as God’ (19:22). The Book of Job implies that the ultimate responsibility for Job’s terrible experience is God, appearing appropriately in diabolical form. Satan acts with the divine permission in persecuting Job (Job 2:6) – hence Job’s desperate cry. Lindberg (1973: 266) suggests that God in Engraving 11 is a demonic deity who by accident reveals to Job what should not have been revealed: that there is a connection between the written law and Hell. Eternal death seems to beckon Job, but this turns out to be the moment of redemption, but what by accident he reveals is in fact the graciousness of God. The very finger that the terrible divinity points to the sacred code of commandments, also points to words which offer the divine gift. The first Hebrew words ( ) to which the finger most obviously points mean ‘your God gives’ – words of grace rather than demand. These are words from Exod 20:12 (Spector 1990: 201). The fact that the Hebrew starts at the end of the fifth commandment is probably deliberate. Blake prioritises the promise of the gift (‘that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee’, Exod 20:12), so that, concealed within the religion of obligation is a gracious promise of liberation. The terrible divinity who seems to demand obedience to the code of law actually points to the words that stress gift rather than obligation.2 The nightmare experience provokes Job to recognise that an internal sense of obligation had been dominant in his life with a theology which had endorsed it. He now sees this as a false understanding masquerading as benign. Only the relaxation of the defences of consciousness, brought about by sleep, allows him to see the nature of his habitual religion of obligation and the conflict which this causes within (cf. Rom 7:24–8:12). This inner conflict is inherent to what it means to be human. Blake wrote of ‘Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul’ (Songs of Innocence and of Experience, E7). The opposition and struggle between them are what enable human growth.3

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Elsewhere, Blake links Satan with Selfhood, a key element in his understanding of a spiritual liberation. Thus in Milton 14:28–32: What do I do here before the Judgment? without my Emanation?/With the daughters of memory & not with the daughters of inspiration?/I in my Selfhood am that Satan: I am that Evil One!/He is my Spectre! in my obedience to loose him from my Hells/To claim the Hells, my Furnaces, I go to Eternal Death. (punctuation Keynes 495–6; E108, cf. J5:22, E147; 27:76, E173)

The Milton passage is of great relevance to the interpretation of the Job engravings. The problem for Job was being cocooned in a confined, self-absorbed world of devotion to memory and habit, closed off from the integration of parts of himself and indeed of the wider world: ‘I in my Selfhood am that Satan: I am that Evil One!’ He had to learn that he was in thrall to ‘the daughters of memory’, and not aligned ‘with the daughters of inspiration’, which resulted in a distortion of himself as the religion of moral virtues eclipsed the forgiveness of sins. It is selfhood which encourages a perverted religion of ‘Laws of Sacrifice for Sin’ and ‘Laws of Chastity and Abhorrence’ ( J49:25–6, E198, Raine 1982: 193–203). What is required, according to Blake, is pictured on Plate 15 of Milton, where, under the caption ‘To Annihilate the Self-hood of Deceit & False Forgiveness’, a nude young man confronts a seemingly ancient divinity who holds fractured tablets of stone engraved with incomprehensible Hebrew letters. The youthful figure with arms outstretched is either about to throttle or embrace the old man. Just as the cloven-hoofed, fearsome divinity entwined with a snake in Job Engraving 11 is both a threat and an agent of promise, so the moment of annihilation of self involves the embrace of that from which one had been alienated and the end of a tyranny of false religion. This is the recognition of the complementarity, the contraries, of the human soul. This engraving and its interpretation of the night vision as the torment of the evil deity, who masquerades as a god, seems far removed from the text of Job. Yet Blake picks up on a theme which the insistently monist Book of Job thrusts on the reader: the fact that Job’s torments are not the result of some malign divine being, but are all carried out with the divine permission and on the basis of a theological understanding which neglects the extent to which Job is part of the problem. In the earlier engravings the exalted God who looks down so empathetically and sadly on what is happening colludes with the persecution of the upright man. It is through an act of an angry divinity with cloven hooves, Satan mixed with the Ancient of Days, that Job can come to see that his theology is in fact a false one,

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a religion based on obligation, justice and the habitual devotion to inherited wisdom. This image is the obverse of Engraving 16 and is as important for Blake’s theology. The latter represents Job’s realisation of the ‘fearful symmetry’ in divinity and the way in which Job’s theological understanding is transformed. Hitherto it had been dominated by obligation to a religion of commandments inherited from his ancestors. In the depiction of Satan falling like lightning from heaven the imbalance in the divine economy, which had led to Job’s tortured outburst ‘why do you persecute me as God’, is itself purged, as the divine Selfhood itself has to go through the fire of judgement. It is not that any aspect of divinity is removed. Rather, the balance between the divine attributes is altered. Engraving 12: the message of Elihu (3.2) This engraving returns to a scene depicting the three comforters with Job and his wife, but this time showing the arrival of the young man Elihu ( Job 32:2), who is pointing heavenwards, where the stars are bright in the night sky. He is a positive force, as the selection from his words reinforces, who looks and points disapprovingly at the Comforters (cf. Job 32:3). The stars are replicated in the outer design. Job looks bemused (as one might expect after the visions of the night), and his wife has her head on her lap, with hands clasped between her knees. The druidical building stands on the right of the image. The three comforters seem to merge, their three different heads apparently emerging out of one shapeless form. Around the margins figures ascend gracefully pointing upwards, mirroring the direction given by Elihu. These figures remind one of those seen in ‘The Last Judgment’ (B642, below, p. 228), who, after being in the bowels of hell, begin the ascent to the throne of Christ. The main caption, ‘I am Young & ye are very Old wherefore I was afraid’, comes from Job 32:6, though the last words ‘and durst not show you my opinion’ are omitted by Blake. Above the image are words from Job 34:21, and in the top corners an affirmation of the human inability fully to comprehend the word of God (33:14). Another verse stresses once again the importance of the night vision (33:15–16) and the divine sovereignty (33:17). Job 33:23–4 suggests that a messenger, or interpreter, can show a man his uprightness. It is possible that Elihu, by his emphasis on the importance of the dream vision, is such a messenger. He is one who is guided by inspiration to highlight the truth about God (Lindberg 1973: 272; Nelms 1970: 348). This points us forward to the important vision which is about to come, when Job experiences God in the whirlwind. Job and his wife are swept up into the whirlwind, themselves becoming part of the divine (as the texts from the Gospel of John quoted on Engraving 17 will make clear). The marginal

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3.2 The message of Elihu.

design of the ascending figures is glossed by Job 35:5–6, underlining in words the importance of a heavenward, visionary, orientation. The stars replicated in the outer design also point forward to the whole of creation as a source of insight, which Job is going to be shown when he sees the morning stars as well as God’s creatures. The number of the stars (eleven, if one excludes the solitary one on the extreme right of the image) corresponds to the number on the right-hand side

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of the stairway in the depiction of Jacob’s dream (Gen 28:10–12, British Museum, 1805, B438). The links with this watercolour are closer than appear at first sight. The ladder is a spiral staircase stretching from the recumbent Jacob to the far distance in heaven (similar to the spiral stair in ‘Epitome of James Hervey’s “Meditations among the Tombs”’, 1820, Tate Gallery, London, B770). In the margin, at the bottom of the Elihu engraving we see a sleeping patriarch (not the young man, Elihu, more like Job). Elihu emphasises the importance of an individual’s need of an ‘Interpreter’ (Job 33:23–4). Elsewhere in his speech, not quoted by Blake, he talks of there being ‘a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgment’ ( Job 32:8–9). This passage is quoted by Ralph Cudworth in a 1647 sermon to the House of Commons. The emphasis in it is on the centrality of that which is ‘experimental’ (i.e. experiential), since ‘virtue cannot be taught by any certain rules or precepts’: A Painter that would draw a Rose, though he may flourish some likeness of it in figure and colour, yet he can never paint the scent and fragrancy; or if he would draw a Flame, he cannot put a constant heat into his colours, he cannot make his pencil drop a Sound, as the Echo in the Epigram mocks at him. . . . All the skill of cunning Artisans and Mechanics, cannot put a principle of Life into a statue of their own making. Neither are we able to enclose in words and letters, the Life, Soul, and Essence of any Spiritual truths; & as it were to incorporate it in them. Some Philosophers have determined, that . . . virtue cannot be taught by any certain rules or precepts. Men and books may propound some directions to us, that may set us in such a way of life and practice, as in which we shall at last find it within our selves, and be experimentally acquainted with it: but they cannot teach it us like a Mechanic Art or Trade. No surely, there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth this understanding. But we shall not meet with this spirit any where, but in the way of Obedience: the knowledge of Christ, and the keeping of his Commandments, must always go together, and be mutual causes of one another. (Cudworth, 1647: 6–7)4

This describes the inter-relationship between understanding and experience central to Blake’s message. Cudworth’s contrast between the painting of a flower and the experience of one captures the contrast between ‘memory’ and inspiration that runs throughout Blake’s work.

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3.3 God in the Whirlwind.

Engraving 13: God in the whirlwind (3.3) The appearance of God in the whirlwind is seen by both Job and his wife, while the comforters cower in fear (cf. ‘Job confessing his presumption to God who answers from the whirlwind’, National Gallery of Scotland, B461). God’s right hand hovers over Job’s head as if in an act of benediction, whilst the other arm is extended (cf. Job’s stance in Engravings 18 and 20 and the divinity in

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Engraving 14 and in Engraving 11). God’s feet appear right at the edge of the picture indicating that this is a form of God different from the divinity with cloven hooves in Engraving 11 (Lindberg 1973: 278). The druidical columns and the mountains are just visible in the tornado-like theophany. In the marginal designs there is a tree root at the bottom of the engraving, and, above, the rotating figures similar to the earlier depiction of the sons of God around the divine throne in Engraving 5. Here the divine figures are similar to the one in the main picture. With linked hands they swirl around as if in a whirling dance movement (cf. ‘The Annunciation to the Shepherds’, B538 2 and ‘God Blessing the Seventh Day’, B434, Bindman 1977:142). The main caption quotes the first words of Job 38:1. Below there is a further description of God at work in nature (Psa 104:3 and Job 38:28) and an allusion to the reproach of the Almighty to Job’s hubris: ‘Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge’ (38:2, assuming that this question relates to Job’s words rather than to Elihu, whose speeches in ch. 37 immediately precede the theophany). These words stress the lack of knowledge on Job’s part. Such sentiments parallel the assertions of the opening of the prophecy of Second Isaiah (especially Isa 40:12–31). The face of God in the whirlwind is identical to the face of Job in the preceding engraving. Engraving 14: the morning stars (3.4) There is now a return to the cosmological depiction of the earlier engravings. Not only Job and his wife, but also the comforters (here but not so obviously in the next engravings) are allowed to see the cosmos. God, with sun around his head, is now in the middle of the image, not at the top, which is given over to figures with hands aloft, the sons of God (that is, angels, cf. Gen 6:2, and see below, p. 104, on the interpretation of these verses in the Enochic literature) shouting for joy. At the bottom, Job, his wife and the three comforters look up, now clearly able to see God in the midst of creation, though in a cave-like shell surrounded by cloud. To the right of God an angel rides four horses and to the left another has two serpentine figures on what appear to be leads. This resembles the way in which Pitt is depicted with Behemoth on a lead: cf. ‘The Spiritual Form of Pitt guiding Behemoth’ (Tate Gallery, London, B651, further Bindman 1977: 163–4). They also resemble the snake-like chariot in the drawings for Comus (B528 4 and the final page of Thel, plate 8, Bindman 1977: 185–6). The main caption is Job 38:7, and above the image is a quotation from 38:31. The emphasis here is on the Creation, confirmed by the marginal designs, which exhibit moments of creation with explicit references to Gen 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 16, 20, 24.

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3.4 The morning stars.

At the bottom of the page there appears to be the enormous tail of the sea monster Leviathan. In this scene humans now read about God not in a book but in the created world in all its incomprehensible glory (in some degree taking up a theme which is enunciated in The Book of Thel of 1789, E3). The comforters, by contrast, had based their answers on book-derived tradition. It is the immediate experience of the divine in the world that transcends the narrow preoccupation which characterises book religion. A different perspective on God and the world prevents

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3.5 Behemoth and Leviathan.

viewers from thinking, at first glance, that there appears to be a return to the cosmology of Job’s unredeemed state (Fisch 1999: 296–8; Reed 1992). Engraving 15: Behemoth and Leviathan (3.5) The major caption is Job 40:15. Above the image and on the left margin is a quotation from the speech of Elihu, which parallels Job’s questioning of the divinity

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(36:29; 37:11–12). At the right side from the perspective of the viewer are words about Behemoth and Leviathan from 40:19 and 41:34. The divine perspective on the natural world in all its glory continues. This time the position of Job and his wife and the three comforters changes. Along with God, they move to the top of the image and are given a perspective that allows them to look down on two great monsters, one hippopotamus–like, and the other dragon-like, in appearance. In 2 Esdras 6:49–52 Leviathan was a sea monster and Behemoth was of the land, and Lindberg (1973: 299–309) links these with the evocations of the spiritual forms of Nelson and Pitt respectively: ‘The Spiritual Form of Pitt guiding Behemoth’, and ‘The Spiritual Form of Nelson guiding Leviathan’ (Tate Gallery, London, B649 and B651). The monsters appear in a great circle, circumscribed, and so, controlled (cf. Psa 104:9). God, flanked by two angels, points down towards these. At the top corners stand two bearded angelic beings each with writing tablets in hand, functioning as scribes (a function of the Angel of the Divine Presence, E559), almost as if they were taking down the divine words about the glory of the created world. Engraving 16: The Fall of Satan (3.6) The ‘Judgment of the Wicked’ (Job 36:17), the fall of Satan, like the interpretation of the divine theophany as a vision of Christ, is not described in the Book of Job. Blake has here reproduced the spatial contrasts of earlier engravings in the cycle, with God enthroned above the firmament. God is enthroned with the book open on his lap and his right hand raised as if in blessing and is flanked, below, by two enormous angels. The base of the throne is partially eclipsed by the fall of Satan in a ball of fire. In the halo surrounding the divinity’s head, there is not just a circle of light but also small angelic beings. Satan passes Job and his wife, as they watch in amazement, while the three comforters cower in fear as the drama of three figures plunging headlong into the flames unfolds before them. The margins are surrounded by flames of fire, and two angelic figures look outward, at the top corner of the frame, as in the previous engraving, though in the latter they had writing tablets in their hands. There are also four cherubs at God’s side (the Four Zoas?), and above, two smaller angels covering their faces. At the centre, in a ball of flame, is a figure with arms wrapped behind his head, falling head first into flames, with two other figures, heads in hands, beside him.5 The open palm of the Almighty which faces the viewer (and at which the eyes of the Almighty are directed) has a mark at its centre. The image shows Job and his wife beholding and comprehending, but the comforters are still in a state of fear. The former are ‘the weak things of the World’ (1 Cor 1:27–28), reduced to a situation of weakness by their torment. ‘The weak of the world’ are the ones best able to comprehend the nature of things.

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3.6 The Fall of Satan.

Two queries about the depiction of God: is it too far-fetched to suggest that this may be a reference to ‘the print of the nails’ on the palm of the crucified and resurrected Jesus ( John 20:25)? Blake indicated an identification between God the Father and the Son (cf. Annotations to Thornton’s ‘Lord’s Prayer’ 3, E668). What is also just visible near the right hand of the Almighty are small lines. The lines around the right hand of the divinity are similar to the lines around the heads of the cherubs, but could it be that the lines near the hands of the Almighty suggest the movement of the hand, perhaps bidding farewell to Satan

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(or possibly even Job)? So might it be a lament for the demise of a particularly restricted understanding of divinity, which Job has hitherto held? Alternatively, the gesture may be one of a blessing, divine approbation of this event, as God, seemingly somewhat unenthusiastically, presides over the eclipse of a theology in Job’s psyche. This is a kind of apocalypse (in both the literal and popular sense of that word), where Job sees his ‘Selfhood’, and indeed his understanding of divinity, passing away as Satan falls. The caption below the engraving is Job 36:17 (once again from the prescient words of Elihu). Below it are words from the New Testament, Luke 10:17–18 and 1 Cor 1:27. Above the image, words from Job’s answer in 26: 6 are quoted. In the midst of the flames which flare up on either side of the image are words from Job 11:7–8, underneath, on the left, Rev 12:10, and on the right, the related passage, John 12: 31. Here Blake the exegete brings together several passages in the New Testament which speak of the triumph over the prince of this age (Aulen 1931). As in ‘The Last Judgment’, the casting out is probably cathartic. Indeed, in The Ghost of Abel (2: 13–21) Satan is subjected to judgement: Satan: I will have Human Blood & not the blood of Bulls or Goats And no Atonement O Jehovah the Elohim live on Sacrifice/Of Men: hence I am God of Men: Thou Human O Jehovah./By the Rock & Oak of the Druid creeping Mistletoe & Thorn/Cains City built with Human Blood, not Blood of Bulls & Goats/Thou shalt Thyself be Sacrificed to Me thy God on Calvary Jehovah: Such is My Will. Thunders that Thou Thyself go to Eternal Death/In Self Annihilation even till Satan Self-subdud Put off Satan/Into the Bottomless Abyss whose torment arises for ever & ever. (E272)

So this raises the question whether, unlike in the New Testament where the fall of Satan is a one-off eschatological event (Lk 10:18; John 12:31; Rev 12:8 cf Rev 20:14), what we have here is the beginning of a process which is depicted in ‘The Last Judgment’, when the fall into the abyss is a prelude to catharsis and the rising up to glory rather than a final punishment. Judgement becomes an ongoing opportunity. Indeed, the fact that in the last engraving Job and his wife return to the tent-like frame in which they started suggests that they may, as opportunity arises, have to go through the whole experiential process again (and again). According to Blake, ‘whenever any Individual Rejects Error & Embraces

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Truth a Last Judgment passes upon that Individual’ (‘A Vision of the Last Judgment’ E562, Lindberg 1973:317). In the Job engravings Blake gives us the story of the different states and aspects of God (Lindberg 1973: 83, 317). Engraving 16 depicts the judgement on a particular understanding of divinity. A central aspect for individuals as they come to terms with the different aspects of their personalities is the redemption of a defective divinity. In Jerusalem, we read: ‘Each Man is in his Spectre’s power/Untill the arrival of that hour/When his Humanity awake/And cast his Spectre into the Lake’ ( J41/37, E184; Paley 1998: 195). To the reader the words are written from right to left (the normal direction when inscribed on the metal plate), possibly increasing their significance. What is depicted in this image is the equivalent for the divinity of casting his spectre into the lake of cathartic fire. Blake’s version of the Lord’s Prayer (E668), where he writes ‘Let his [Satan’s] Judgment be Forgiveness that he may be consumed in his own Shame’, parallels Job’s transformation, which brings him to the moment when he prays for his enemies. Blake’s interpretation of the Book of Job enables the reader to understand the need for the reintegration of all aspects of divinity: spirit and the critical transcendent obligation. Satan, in the Book of Job, is very much part of the divine economy and not some errant, autonomous operator who works against the divine purposes. In Engraving 16 divinity is undergoing an equivalent process of redemption and integration. This should not surprise us as the divine in human means that the redemptive narrative of Job must also include the redemption of divinity. Engraving 17: ‘But now my eye seeth thee’ (3.7) This, and the next engraving, are in many ways the climax of the Job sequence, though their significance is not fully comprehensible without the written commentary. The usually given title ‘The Vision of Christ’ is, for reasons which will be apparent, a good description (Paley suggests that this title is ‘not so much wrong as incomplete – the subject of the engraving is the unity of the Father, Son, Holy Ghost and Humanity’, Paley 2003: 254). What we see in Engraving 17 is an apparently divine figure surrounded by a bright halo of light, stretching out both hands to bless Job’s wife and Job, the former with hands raised in an attitude of prayer, the latter with hands on his lap. The three comforters have their backs to this event, all with heads in hands, but with the central figure taking a surreptitious glimpse at the event taking place behind him (but only in the engraving, not in the watercolours). The backdrop, vaguely visible, is of mountains, with the glimmer of light coming on the right (east). In the margins there is little but a cumulus cloud outline, and at the

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3.7 ‘But now my Eye seeth thee’.

bottom an angel presiding with eyes closed over open books and a scroll. This is the first time in the sequence that the writing appears in books or scrolls, and also the first time the viewer sees what might be written in any books. But the important thing to note is that the books are situated in the margins of the image. They function as marginal comment on the images, which are central to what Blake wants to communicate. Words are now in their proper place.

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The major caption underlines that subordinate place. It is made up of words from Job 42:5: ‘I have heard thee with the hearing of the Ear but now my Eye seeth thee’. These words are subtly different from the Authorised Version which has ‘I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear’. Crucially, however, Blake omits the words ‘and [I] repent in dust and ashes’, thereby indicating that there is no subscription here to the notion of humanity having to grovel before a transcendent deity. This is insight, not submission. Above the picture there are quotations from 1 John 3: 2 and Psa 8: 3–4, whilst above that 1 Samuel 2:6. In the centrally placed scroll below the image are the words ‘At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father & you in me & I in you’ ( Jn 14:20) and ‘If ye loved me ye would rejoice because I said I go unto the Father’ ( Jn 14:28, though omitting, crucially, ‘for my father is greater than I’ which would conflict with Jn 10:30, Lindberg 1973: 324). Below the major caption are other quotations from the Gospel of John: 14:9; 10:30 (above the book on the left in the margin); and verses inscribed on the open book on the left of the page are 14:7, 11, 21b, 17b. This last is a verse about the Spirit-Paraclete, which Blake now links with the indwelling of Christ the Divine Image. Verses inscribed on the book on the right are 14:21b and 23, and 16–17a. Blake omits all reference to ‘keeping my commandments’ (14:21a), which might echo the religion of law of the old dispensation. The quotation of John 14:17 (‘for he dwelleth in you & shall be with you’) differs from the KJV which reads ‘for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you’ (Lindberg 1973: 322). Blake hereby stresses that the Father is already in them.6 Here the mutual indwelling, which is such a prominent feature of the Farewell Discourses of the Gospel of John ( Jn 14–17), glosses a scene in which Job and his wife are touched by the light of the divine glory. The contrast between hearing and seeing in Job 42:5 is reminiscent of Rev 5:5–6, where the seer hears words and then what he sees interprets the words he hears (LaBelle 1973: 543): ‘And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof. And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.’ Hearsay is inadequate, because what the eye has seen is what constitutes theology. What is puzzling about Job’s words in 42:5, however, is that it is not at all clear from the text of Job, what he actually sees of God (notwithstanding Blake’s conviction that Job, and his wife, see God face to face). Chapters 38–41 offer an extended answer in which Job is firmly shown the ways of God, though in words that he cannot comprehend. On the basis of the text

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of Job his ‘sight’ of God is less the sight of the eyes than the inward perception of the reality of God, the tradition of whose existence and demands is what Job had hitherto accepted and to which he had been obedient. This engraving marks the moment when the contents of the books are actually seen by the reader, and we discover from the words written on the pages that the one whom Job and his wife have seen in the theophany is none other than Christ, the divine in human. Here is the proper ordering of text and image, that is with the image being given priority and the text illustrating the dominant image. The identification of Old Testament theophanies with the pre-existent Christ resembles a familiar interpretative approach in early Christian writings and found in the New Testament in John 12:41. In his rewritten Lord’s Prayer of 1827 Blake paraphrases the opening with the words ‘Jesus, our Father, who art in thy heaven call’d by thy Name the Holy Ghost’ (punctuation Keynes 788; E668, cf. Jerusalem plates 96, 99, Davies 1948: 31–53; Lindberg 1973: 322–3). This indicates a similar identification of Christ with the Father, which is also typical of the Gospel of John ( Jn 1:18; 14:9). Indeed, a major theme of the Gospel of John is Christ as the image of the invisible God (Ashton 2007). The quotation of the Gospel of John here is apposite. Much of what this gospel says relates to the theme of the Son being the revelation of the invisible Father, the revelation of the hidden God ( Jn 14:9; 1:18; cf. Col 1:15, which is quoted in part in M2:12; E96). The vision of God, the goal of the heavenly ascents of the apocalyptic seers, is in this gospel related to the revelation of God in Jesus. All claims to have seen God in the past are repudiated. Even when, as in Isaiah’s case, the scriptural text indicates that a prophet glimpsed God enthroned in glory. This vision is interpreted in the Gospel as a vision of the preexistent Christ ( Jn 12:41). No one has seen God except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father ( Jn 6:46). So, the vision of God reserved in the Book of Revelation for the fortunate seer (Rev 4:1) and for the inhabitants of the New Jerusalem who will see God face to face (Rev 22:4) is, in the Gospel of John, found in the person of Jesus of Nazareth the Divine in Human. He is the one ‘in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’ (Col 2:3), ‘for in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily’ (Col 2:9). So, in considering the divine theophany (chs 38–41), Blake interprets the vision of God in the whirlwind as a vision of Jesus Christ. Job’s understanding of God changes from transcendent monarch to immanent divine presence, epitomized by the words quoted on Engraving 17: ‘At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you ( Jn 14:20). If ye loved me, ye would rejoice because I said I go unto the Father’ ( Jn 14:28). More than this, as Leslie

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Tannenbaum has put it (Tannenbaum 1982: 83), ‘by juxtaposing the quotation from Job with those from John, Blake clearly equates the process of vision – the combined ability to see and hear – with the process of identifying with Christ’. That is beautifully put and enables one to comprehend how it is that an idea which is so difficult to depict, namely, the identification with Christ, can be put pictorially. But this theological statement has an essential ethical component. For Blake (as indeed in the Gospel of John and the Pauline letters), living in God means a particular kind of life. Theology and ethics are indistinguishable. Blake’s emphasis on mutual indwelling is not some kind of ecstatic state, for it is above all a way of life, a practice demonstrated in universal brotherhood and forgiveness of sins. Jesus speaks to Albion in Jerusalem: ‘I am not a God afar off. I am a brother and a friend; Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me’ ( J4:18–19, E146); also ‘We know that man subsists by Brotherhood & Universal Love . . . Man liveth not by Self alone but in his brothers face’ (The Four Zoas Night 9, 133.22, where Ephesians 3:10 is cited, E402, cf. Jerusalem 91: 1–30, E251; 96:14–16, E255). This is something which is demonstrated by Job in the next engraving. Blake’s radical predecessor, Abiezer Coppe, understood the way in which theology and ethics coincide (Makdisi 2003: 309–10 and below, p. 172). His overwhelming experience enabled him to be God and to speak and see with the eyes of God (just as Job does in Blake’s Job sequence). As a result of this Coppe turned his back on even the most radical groups because they maintained the distance between human and divine as he embarked on a life which was determined by the new perspective of the indwelling God. Like Job, Coppe did not find this put him in any kind of superior situation because it was the experience of becoming one of the base things that enabled him to know, and to live, differently. Engraving 18: Job prays for his friends (3.8) What is most striking about this image is that Job stands, arms outstretched, with his back to the viewer. In the Butts watercolour he stands with his back to the altar, and so less like a priest offering sacrifice (B550 18). Job’s head is turned to one side, so that his face is visible, looking heavenwards before a stone altar, seemingly offering sacrifice (cf. ‘Noah and the Rainbow’, Houghton Library, 1803–5, Harvard, B437). He stands erect for the first time in the sequence. Above him is part of the circle of light, which had been seen surrounding Christ in the previous picture. Kneeling beside the upright Job is his wife also bathed in light, and on his right the comforters, in shade, are bowing in obeisance. The flame from the altar moves heavenward, towards the circle of light. In the back-

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3.8 Job prays for his friends.

ground may be discerned the druidical pillars, a tree, and the mountains with the light coming from behind them on the left (west?) of the image. In the margins we have angels with trumpets possibly proclaiming a solemn moment (cf. Joel 2:1), as Job prays for his friends and demonstrates the reality of his conversion. There are ears of corn below, and, once again, a single open book with what appears to be an engraver’s tool and an artist’s palette and paint brush and engraver’s burin. There is a vague resemblance to arrows which puts

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the reader in mind of the ‘arrows of desire’ of the third stanza of the ‘Preface to Milton’, E95. Here Blake’s work inserts itself into the message, in this climactic scene. In this engraving the words below the image are crucial to its interpretation. The major caption is ‘And my Servant Job shall pray for you’ ( Job 42: 8), and above the image ‘Also the Lord accepted Job’ ( Job 42:9). Blake has here picked up a contrast in the text of the Book of Job which describes Job praying while the comforters (still bound by the old ways of thinking) are instructed to offer sacrifice: And it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words unto Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends; for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath. Therefore take unto you now seven bullocks, and seven rams, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you: for him I will accept. . . . And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends. (42:7–8, 10)

The contrast between the action of Job and his friends indicates that Blake was a close reader of the text. The emphasis in Job 42:8 echoes Rom 12:1–2 (which is not quoted in the marginal texts): ‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God’. Forgiveness of sins is the living sacrifice. The open book with its writing glosses the major caption. If the Gospel of John was used by Blake as the foundation for the theological transformation, here it is the Sermon on the Mount, which acts as the key for the completion of Job’s deliverance from his ‘Babylonian captivity’. The words from Matthew 5:44–5, 48 start with the exhortation to ‘Love your enemies’ and to ‘pray for those that despitefully use you & persecute you’. These last words are particularly relevant to Job’s situation in which he has been tormented, not only by Satan, but also by the so-called comforters. They have tried to maintain him in a false theological ideology, rather than to accompany him in the ‘pilgrim’s progress’ through which he has been moving. Spiritual and mental transformation is incomplete, however, without ethical transformation. Job has seen with the eye rather than relied on memory and his action in praying for his friends demonstrates his release from captivity. ‘Friendship’, David Fuller writes, ‘is the first step towards love of God, and the last. There is no stairway, passing from mortal to immortal, putting love of the human behind one’ (Fuller 1988: 220).

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3.8a Job and his wife receive gifts.

Engraving 19: Job and his wife receive gifts (3.8a) In this image Job and his wife sit in sombre pose as three women and a man come towards them. Their suffering has left them materially needy, even though spiritually rich (cf. Rom 15:27). One woman stretches out her hand offering what appears to be an earring while the man carries a jar and another woman an unidentifiable gift. There is a stone wall behind them but no sign of the druidical

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pillars. Around the margin are figures, apparently male and female, watching the sight and below the main image two figures float, bearing provisions, with palm trees laden with fruit on either side, which merge with the figures above. The major caption quotes Job 42:11, which is complemented by Psa 136:23. Above, in the blossoming trees are words from 1 Sam. 2:7, another part of Hannah’s prayer, and Job 38:41. The words which Blake engraves are ‘every one also gave him a piece of Money’. Paley notes ‘although the KJV text says “every man”, Blake changed this to “Every one”. This is indeed true to the spirit of the passage’ (Paley 2003: 255). ‘True to the spirit of the passage’ is very nicely put. It here relates to the particular verse but could equally well apply to Blake’s interpretation of the book as a whole. This image contrasts with Engraving 5, where Job is depicted as a donor rather than a recipient. Job used to regard it as his obligation to give to the poor, and in his self-justificatory speech in Job 29–30 offered this as part of his apologia. The roles are reversed here. It is as a recipient initially of the trials and tribulations and then of the gift of divine vision that Job’s life has been turned upside down. In the process he had his eyes opened to that which is around him in creation, which are channels of eternity. In the watercolour Job’s wife is depicted as beautifully content and serene, epitomising Blake’s proverb: ‘The thankful reciever bears a plentiful harvest’ (MHH9, E37, cf. ‘gratitude is the Gift of God for good I am thankful that I feel it draws the soul towards Eternal life’, Letter to Hayley, 14 January 1804, E740). Blake, like Job, was rescued by his two patrons, Butts and Linnell, just as he was by the beauty of the dedication and solidarity of Catherine. Engraving 20: Job and his daughters (3.9) The major caption quotes Job 42:15 and below it are verses from Psa 139:8: ‘if I ascend up into Heaven thou art there. If I make my bed in Hell behold Thou art there also’. These words embrace the whole gamut of Job’s experience. Above the scene are further words from Psa 139:17 (‘How precious are thy thoughts unto me O God how great is the sum of them’). Unlike the rest of the series, this engraving portrays a much more animated and active Job. He is surrounded by three young women who seem to be in an attitude of ‘sitting at the feet’ of an old man. His arms are outstretched (in cruciform shape?) with the index finger, especially on his right hand, pointing. Behind him are scenes as if viewed through windows, one square (behind Job) and two circular. The scenes appear to be ‘flashbacks’ to Job’s experience. The one on the left as the viewer looks at it is possibly the destruction of the house of his sons and daughters, though this panel has two men piercing recumbent figures with spears,

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3.9 Job and his daughters.

with a figure flying overhead. This is not quite the same as the earlier scene (Engraving 3), but accentuates violence done by human beings to their fellow humans. The other two are much closer to their antecedents ( Job being smitten with boils on the right – though this could be another view of the same scene as in Engraving 3 – and, in the centre, God appearing in the whirlwind). Below these scenes is another level of panels separated by what appear to be snakes. On the left

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there is a bearded divinity, reminiscent of the depictions of Urizen in The First Book of Urizen, and the divinity in Engraving 11, and on the right possibly a different figure in obeisance, much as the position of Job’s wife in Engraving 8. The scene described is a church apse or a palace where the archetypes of all things that happen on earth are represented. Paley quotes Jerusalem 16:61–4 (E161; so Lindberg 1973; Paley 2003: 258; Fuller 1988: 182): All things acted on Earth are seen in the bright Sculptures of/Los’s Halls & every Age renews its power from these Works/With every pathetic story possible to happen from Hate or/Wayward Love & every sorrow & distress is carved here.7

In the margins are a harp and a lute and flowering shrubs, the former pointing forward to the paean, which will characterise the scene in the last engraving. There is a striking similarity between the depiction of Job here and Urizen on Copy A, Plate 8 of The First Book of Urizen. The shape of the arms is more noticeable in the case of Job because, unlike Urizen, he consults no book, and his arms point instead to ‘the text of life’ rather than following the details of a written text. Job’s experience, revelatory as it has been, is the basis of his legacy. The contrast between Job and Urizen may be deliberate. The Urizenic is what happens to a person when he or she is devoted to memory, to the exclusion of the present moment of experience. The stress on the legacy given to Job’s daughters parallels an apocryphal text, the Jewish Second Temple pseudepigraphon Testament of Job 46–53 (Sparks 1984: 644–8; Lindberg 1973: 137–48), where Job bequeathes gifts to his daughters, magical cords which would protect against an enemy and which enabled knowledge of heavenly things and angelic speech. The conclusion of the Testament of Job indicates the visionary and mystical inheritance which Job bequeathed to his daughters, which, as in the Blake engraving, linked the legacy with Job’s experience. This is evident in the way in which the magical threestringed girdles healed Job of the plague of worms in his body, verses 19–20. Whether Blake could have known about this work is not clear (discussed by Lindberg 1973: 139, 343–4). Nevertheless, the issue of female inheritance is found elsewhere in the Bible in the case of the daughters of Zelophehad (Num 27:1–11; 36:3), though they assume a more negative role in Milton 29:55–6 (E128) and are linked with Milton’s wives and daughters in Milton 17:11 (E110). Fisch has drawn attention to this image. Job moves from being a figure in a hermeneutic drama to being himself a new hermeneutic model, the embodied hermeneut whose own experience becomes the stuff of inspiration

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(Fisch 1999: 317). Those who identify with Job, and undergo the theological and ethical transformation have ever-changing mental pictures to fit the frames depending on the story and experiences which have generated their own liberative process. When the human fuses with the Divine Spirit, and enables that Joblike journey to be lived out, then it will not be the Bible to which recourse alone is made but the life lived and illuminated by means of the Bible. Engraving 21: Job’s latter state (3.10) The final engraving returns to the content and the format of the first. Job and his wife are standing with their sons and daughters (ten in number) with musical instruments no longer on the tree, but in their hands. The books have gone and Job’s wife holds a scroll and one of the daughters a pamphlet (a piece of music?). They stand under a tree. In this engraving the moon is to be seen on the left of the image, and the sun, this time presumably rising, is on the right. As the first in the series, the image is contained in the pentagonal box shaped like a tent. Below the picture is a sacrificial altar with flames springing from it and with rams’ heads at each corner. There is a ram seated in the bottom left of the engraving and a bull on the right (the opposite way round from the first engraving in the series). The scene is reminiscent of ‘The Voice of the Ancient Bard’ in Songs of Experience, with Job playing a similar sort of instrument. Indeed, the opening words of that poem, which suggest experience as the means of the cleansing of perception, are an apt commentary on Job’s own experience: Youth of delight come hither: And see the opening morn. Image of truth new born. Doubt is fled, & clouds of reason, Dark disputes & artful teazing. (E31)

It is the absence of the books from this engraving which is so striking, replaced as they are by the scrolls. The different positions given to the books in the different engravings only serve to underline their potentially problematic nature. Already this scene has been anticipated (Engraving 2) when Job’s son is shown pointing to a scroll. The major caption is Job 42:12 and the last two verses of the book are printed on either side of the altar. In Engraving 1 words from 2 Cor 3:6 are found on the altar, whereas here they are from Heb 10:6 (Blake has ‘In burnt Offerings for Sin

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3.10 Job’s latter state.

thou hast had no pleasure’, as compared with KJV: ‘In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure’, cf. Psa 51:16), which suggests that the character of Job’s offering in Engraving 18 is not a sacrifice. Across the top on either side of the canopy-like frame is printed Rev 15:3: ‘Great & Marvellous are thy Works Lord God Almighty. Just & true are thy ways O thou King of Saints’. The words of Rev 15:3 echo the Song of Moses, a song of deliverance, recalling

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when the Israelites celebrated their liberation from Pharaoh inspired by Miriam (Exod 15, especially v. 20; cf. Luke 15:25). Perhaps implied in these words is Blake’s attempt to ‘justify the ways of God to men’ (Paradise Lost i.26 quoted at the beginning of Blake’s Milton, E95). There is a similar moment of spiritual deliverance depicted on Plate 15 of Milton, where the integration in the poet of two sides of himself comes about, surrounded by celebration, as he annihilates the ‘Self-hood of Deceit & false Forgiveness’. The words from Rev 15:3 are akin to those of Nebuchadnezzar after his restoration in Daniel 4:37: ‘all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase’. Both Nebuchadnezzar and Job were brought low and in their experience of abasement learnt of God.8 Job has tasted the mystery of joy and woe ‘woven fine’ (‘Auguries of Innocence’ 59; E491) in his ordeal. The contraries of humanity and experience, the divine life in which God is perplexingly in darkness and in light, are so well expressed in the opening verses of Psalm 139 and exquisitely captured by Blake in ‘The Tyger’ (E24–5). The eyes of Job and his wife are opened to the panorama of creation through which the divine life is made manifest as they are shown the wonder of God’s works in creation, so far exceeding what may be contained between the covers of even the most sublime book (Reed 1992). HERMENEUTICAL

REFLECTIONS

In the Job engravings Blake took up a basic theme which he had set out in All Religions are One (Principle 5, E1): the fundamental religious experience on which all religion is based is the ‘Poetic genius’ or ‘the Spirit of Prophecy’. In fact, the story of Job is the story of a man who comes to learn that ‘if it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character. the Philosophic and Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things & stand still, unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again’ (There is No Natural Religion, Conclusion, E3). ‘Repeating the same dull round over again’ is what Blake sees the unconverted Job doing: ‘Thus did Job continually’. Job, however, becomes one who ‘sees the Infinite in all things’ and so ‘sees God’ (E3). Blake’s Job series is the story of the spiritual journey of the man who had hitherto ‘kept his course along the vale of death’, then found himself on a ‘perilous path’, and discovered that ‘Without Contraries is no progression’ and as a result discovered that ‘a new heaven is begun’ (MHH2–3, E33–4). The significant thing about the Job sequence is that Blake hardly ever moves beyond the words of the Bible, complemented by his own images, in expounding his understanding of the Book of Job. Although there are echoes of

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the themes of myths from the earlier illuminated books, for example, in the tension between the spirit and the letter, and the god of law separated from humanity, nevertheless the entire exposition is derived from the Bible alone. Commentators have suggested that Blake’s interpretation of the Book of Job tells us more about Blake than the meaning of the Book of Job (Fisch 1999: 315). At first sight this view has some plausibility. But, in fact, Blake explores neglected strands of the text and largely exploits the space offered by the text itself for his own interpretation rather than imposing his own interests on it. Job’s perspective changes (so Job 42:5). Blake’s exegesis shows an attentiveness to aspects of the text which suggests that his reading offers a serious attempt to get at the subject-matter. He not only explains the text as a whole but also takes what he sees as the subject-matter (encapsulated in Job 42:5) and interprets the whole text in the light of it. Similarly, Paulson (1982: 116; cf. Lindberg 1973: 28) stresses the essentially exegetical character of Blake’s work. In addition, he comments that Blake was ‘a great illustrator of the repressed text who brings out its latent meaning which has been covered over by pious and tendentious commentators’.9 In the Job engravings, Blake may have depicted Job, but, as the following letter to Thomas Butts indicates, the series may have been pervaded with his own ‘Job-like’ experience and an exegesis fructified by personal experience may be all the more insightful as a result. And now let me finish with assuring you that Tho I have been very unhappy I am so no longer I am again Emerged into the light of Day I still & shall to Eternity Embrace Christianity and Adore him who is the Express image of God but I have traveld thro Perils & Darkness not unlike a Champion I have Conquerd and shall still Go on Conquering Nothing can withstand the fury of my Course among the Stars of God & in the Abysses of the Accuser My Enthusiasm is still what it was only Enlarged and confirmd. (Letter to Thomas Butts, 1802, E720)

4

Exploring the contraries in divinity

In the ‘Job’ sequence we have seen the complex way in which God, Satan, Christ and the enthroned divinity as the Ancient of Days, or Angel of the Divine Presence, oscillate with each other in the drama that unfolds in Job’s story of redemption. Multiplicity in divinity is key to Blake’s mythology. Despite Blake’s protestations that he is opposed to ‘Bibles and sacred codes’ because they teach a dualistic understanding of humanity and divinity (MHH4; E34), he was, as Morton Paley notes, ‘a monist who found his mythology entrapping him in a dualistic position’ (Paley 1973a: 123; 1994: 10). This chapter is an attempt to understand the origins of this position in biblical depictions of God as the ‘one and the many’ ( Johnson 1961) and the emerging theology in the gnostic texts of the early centuries of the Common Era. In particular, the puzzling relationship between God and his angel in Genesis and Exodus will be the focus of discussion.1 Blake enunciated his complex interpretation of the interrelationship within the divinity in the second engraving of the Job series. In addition to Satan we have ‘The Angel of the Divine Presence’. This figure is identified with the enthroned deity who, like Job, has a book on his lap. The words in English and the Hebrew , are immediately above the figure. The deity who points downwards to Job also has features similar to those of Job. Elsewhere, Blake writes of the Angel of the Divine Presence: ‘The Aged Figure with Wings, having a writing tablet & taking account of the numbers who arise is That Angel of the Divine Presence mention’d in Exodus xiv. 19 v. & in other Places this angel is frequently call’d by the Name of Jehovah Elohim, the “I Am” of the Oaks of Albion’ (‘A Vision of the Last Judgment’, E559). In two other works, from the last decade of Blake’s life, there is reference to the Angel of the Divine Presence. The figure appears in Laocoön (E273), and in ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ (E521, lines 29–32), where the angel is a creator of humanity and a law-giver, who is reproached by Jesus for keeping humankind in thrall to the

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religion of law: ‘Thou Angel of the Presence Divine That didst create this Body of Mine, Wherefore hast thou writ these laws And created Hell’s dark jaws?’ The Angel of the Divine Presence as the physical form of divinity (Scholem 1962:276 n19) is also portrayed in Blake’s watercolour ‘The Angel of the Presence clothing Adam and Eve with coats of skins’ (1803; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, B436). THE ANGEL OF THE DIVINE PRESENCE, OR LORD, AND OTHER EXALTED ANGELS IN THE

THE

ANGEL

OF THE

BIBLICAL TRADITION

In the Bible there is a complex relationship between the different manifestations of divinity. Not only are there different names for God (‘Jehovah’, to use the word Blake uses for the name of God, and Elohim, further Lindberg 1973: 289), but we find references to ‘The Angel of the Lord’, a figure who seems to have a human form, functioning both as the divine agent and the manifestation of God. One modern commentator has suggested that Jewish religion never lost the polytheism of its Canaanite background and functionally believed in the existence of two gods (Hayman 1991:14). Two centuries before the modern discussion concerning the character of ancient Jewish monotheism (Newman 1999; Hannah 1999), Blake was clearly aware of passages in the Bible which pointed in this direction, and he made of this figure a contrary aspect of divinity functioning as creator and legislator. God is elohim (plural) after all, and occasionally El (singular, Psa 82:1). In Genesis 1:26–7, cf. Isaiah 6:8; Psalm 82:1, God seems to address, or be surrounded by, other divine beings. The words in Gen 1:26 ‘And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’ were taken by ancient readers of Genesis as indicating that God had help in the creation of the world. Indeed, the reference to the creation of Man in Gen 2:7 (‘And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul’) suggested that there were two parts to the process: the formation of the body, and the spirit or soul. The first-century Jewish interpreter, Philo of Alexandria, writes of the creation of the body of man as being by a lesser divine being, with God responsible for breathing into man the divine breath (Philo, ‘On the Creation of the World’, 135, Colson 1929–62; Fossum 1985: 203; Nuttall 1998: 7–20; Hayman 1991). There are many examples in the Bible of a heavenly being who acts as God’s representative in such a way that he could be thought of as God himself (e.g. Judges 13, especially 8–23, Ashton 2000). There are passages which describe an emissary of Yahweh who is no longer clearly distinguishable from God, but

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seems to have God’s own appearance and speech. In the words of the angel (mal’ak) in Genesis 21:17 and 22:11–12 the angel speaks as if God is speaking. Thus, this being is called ‘God’ (Gen 31:11 and 13). In Genesis 16 we find the account of Abraham’s intercourse with Hagar, the promise of the birth of Ishmael, and the final ejection of Hagar. A key player in this drama is the Angel of the Lord, who accompanies Hagar and is responsible for offering a promise, which mirrors that to Abraham (Gen 16:10; cf. 22:17). The angel gives a particular gloss to the promises in Gen 12:2 and 15:18, so that it ceases to be clear whether the promise to Abraham is confined to Isaac. The Angel of the Lord appears on the scene after Hagar has run away from Sarai, finds Hagar in the wilderness, tells her to return to Sarai, promises to multiply her offspring (16:10) and announces the birth of Ishmael. Leaving aside the identity of the two angels who come to Lot in Sodom (Genesis 19:1), the angel appears once more to Hagar, this time as the agent of God (Gen 21:17), and then, climactically, in the story of the sacrifice of Isaac. Here there is a more obvious contrast between the voice of God who tests Abraham and instructs him to sacrifice his son (Gen 22:1) and the angel of the Lord who intervenes at the moment that Abraham was due to kill Isaac (22:11), and then is the one who reiterates the promise (22:15). While it would be stretching the evidence from Genesis to suggests that the Angel of the Lord and God are at odds one with another, the angel’s accompanying of Hagar and the intervention to stop the slaying of Isaac suggest a degree of fluidity between God and the divine angel, even though in the end both God and the angel agree in making a promise of offspring to both Ishmael (Gen 16: 10–12 and 21:12) and Isaac (Gen 17: 5 and 22: 15–18). ‘T W O

POWERS IN HEAVEN’

There was a significant feature of ancient Jewish debate concerning the complex nature of the divinity and the way in which various heavenly figures seemed to be part of the one god. A passage of enormous importance for Blake, and indeed for the history of Jewish and Christian theology (Segal 1978; Barker 1992; Rowland 1982: 94–112), is the first chapter of the prophecy of Ezekiel.2 At the end of his vision of God, Ezekiel sees sitting upon the throne ‘a likeness as it were of human form’. This figure is further described in 1:27, and the impression gained is very much that this is a figure with bodily form. The figure described in this verse appears again in 8:2, but this time is not linked to the throne-chariot as in 1:26–7. A comparison of the two verses shows that we are dealing with the same figure:

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Ezek. 1:26–7

Ezek. 8:1–3

And above the dome over their heads there was something like a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was something that seemed like a human form. Upward from what appeared like the loins I saw something like gleaming amber, something that looked like fire enclosed all around; and downward from what looked like the loins I saw something that looked like fire, and there was a splendour all around.

In the sixth year, in the sixth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I sat in my house, with the elders of Judah sitting before me, the hand of the Lord GOD fell upon me there. I looked, and there was a figure that looked like a human being; below what appeared to be its loins it was fire, and above the loins it was like the appearance of brightness, like gleaming amber. It stretched out the form of a hand, and took me by a lock of my head; and the spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven, and brought me in visions of God to Jerusalem

No mention is made in 8:2 of the throne-chariot upon which this human figure sat (Ezek 1:26). The figure in 1:26–7 is not tied to the throne-chariot and could appear apart from it. According to 8:2 this separability enabled the figure to act as an agent of the divine purpose, in so far as he is the means whereby Ezekiel is removed to Jerusalem. Here there is the reappearance of a figure, independent of the throne-chariot, which, like the Angel of the Lord, appears with divine glory and functions, and is the agent of the divine purposes, in transporting the prophet. The strange figure in Ezek 8:2 (possibly influencing Blake in Urizen, Plate 3, according to Tannenbaum 1982: 326 n.3), so similar to what the prophet has seen according to Ezekiel 1, is an independent agent of the divine will. Such theological complexity, ‘the one and the many’ in ancient Jewish views of God ( Johnson 1961), is crucial for understanding Blake’s interpretation of the Bible. One of the most remarkable aspects of Jewish theology in antiquity is the campaign that emerging rabbinic Judaism conducted against opponents who argued that there were ‘two powers in heaven’. In the past these were regarded as either Christians (who attributed divinity to Jesus) or ‘gnostics’ (who said that there was an evil divine power in the universe alongside the good god). It seems likely, however, that the disagreement was within Jewish thought itself,

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which was rooted in the beliefs about exalted angelic figures, to which we have already referred (Segal 1978; Fossum 1979; Newman 1999). In the rabbinic texts such beliefs are linked with an exalted angel called Metatron who is identified with the angel of the Lord in Exodus 23:20 (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 38b). Metatron has exalted status because God’s name dwells in him. Metatron is then identified with Enoch (Gen 5:24), who after his ascent to heaven is transformed into the angel Metatron in the Sefer Hekhalot, or 3 Enoch (Charlesworth 1983: 223–316, cf. 1 Enoch 70:17 in Laurence’s translation). In many ancient Jewish sources one finds heavenly angelic powers, seemingly sharing characteristics of divinity, acting with the power of God and occasionally being mistaken for God. One rabbinic legend has a teacher (called Elisha ben Abuyah) ascending to heaven and seeing the exalted angel Metatron seated on a throne like that of God and as a result mistaking the angel for God (3 Enoch 16, Charlesworth 1983: 268). Early Christianity grew up in a world in which there was a multitude of heavenly powers, even in Judaism, and it is no surprise that it rapidly linked its beliefs about Christ with these angelic speculations and pictured Christ functioning as divine vice-gerent (Hengel 1976). Both in the Bible and in the traditions of interpretation stemming from it there existed complexity, if not confusion, about the nature of divinity: was God singular or plural? The existence of tensions and contrasts in the biblical accounts are indicative of the interpretative potential which early Christians, whether those who were later deemed orthodox or those who were deemed heterodox, exploited to the full as they developed their theology. There is some evidence that exalted angelic agents were held responsible not only for the creation itself (Fossum 1985: 18 and 214) but also for the giving of the law to Moses. The link of angels with the law is also found in the New Testament, for example in Gal 3:19 and in Acts 7: 36–9. In the latter passage, the law given on Sinai is linked with angelic beings. It was an angel that appeared to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3; Acts 7:36) and spoke to Moses at Sinai (Acts 7:38). Stephen’s words implicitly question whether the establishment of the tent of testimony was really the result of divine, as opposed to angelic, endorsement. The Greek in v. 44 of Acts 7 is ambiguous. While at first ‘the one speaking’ might seem to refer to God, in fact the foregoing reference (in Acts 7:38) to converse between the divine world and Moses is to the angel who speaks with Moses. Both verses relate key elements of the Sinai event and wilderness experience to an angelic being and subtly distance God from the endorsement of the wilderness cult and consequently the Temple in Jerusalem

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(cf. 2 Samuel 7:13; 1 Kings 8:19). In addition, the incident of the calf (Exodus 32) results in God handing the people over to the worship of the host of heaven. Amos 5:25–7 (Greek version) is used to prove that it was not to God that Israel sacrificed, but the host of heaven and Moloch (Acts 7:43), a point which may have probably unleashed the wrath of Stephen’s ‘hearers’ (Acts 7:54) who would have seen this as a near blasphemous charge. Elsewhere, according to the Epistle of Barnabas, we find a more radical challenge to the authority of the Law of Moses than we find in the New Testament. The only way in which Old Testament law can be read is in an allegorical way and should never be taken literally. The true covenant came with Christ rendering the religion of Judaism bankrupt (‘Epistle of Barnabas’ 4:6–8, Carleton-Paget 1994). The historian of ancient religion Jarl Fossum has views on the development of traditions concerning the Angel of the Lord which accord with Blake’s: That the Angel of the Lord was a demiurgic being should not be dismissed as a late innovation . . . [it] stems from a time when the borderlines between the various divisions within the wider phenomenon of Judaism were vague. While Gen i.26 could be taken to imply that the body of man was the production of (certain) angels, Gen ii.7 lent itself to the view that Adam’s body was produced by the principal angel, the Angel of YHWH. (Fossum 1985: 237)

Of course, Blake did not have the array of ancient sources available to him, but like ancient interpreters, including the first-century Jewish philosopher Philo, he had the Bible and was able to probe the ‘contraries’ that are to be found in the biblical text. His exploitation of the contraries in divinity uncannily anticipates discussions about the theology of Second Temple Judaism at the end of the twentieth century by historians of ancient religion. GOD, SATAN

AND THE ANGELS

Satan features in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in connection with Milton’s understanding and the mistake that Milton had made in reversing the characteristics of the Messiah and Satan (MHH5; E34). From the The Four Zoas onwards (especially in Milton and Jerusalem) we find Satan being identified with ‘selfhood’ ( J27:76, E173; M14:30, E108; cf. Milton, Plate 15). Selfhood is a state of death ( J49:67, E199) and is connected with the commitment to holiness which Blake criticises ( M39:1, E140). It is this ‘Satanic’ state ( J90:35–8, E250; cf. FZviii:190–9,

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E376), the body of flesh, that Jesus put off on the cross, echoing the language of Colossians (Col 2:11; ‘Everlasting Gospel’, E524, and below, p. 188). This kind of understanding is the context in which the Job engravings emerged. The relationship between God and Satan in the Bible is complex. On the one hand the few references we have in the Old Testament do little more than repeat the theological logic of the Book of Job itself, where Satan is in effect an angelic agent to whom God gives licence to do what he likes with Job except take his life ( Job 2:12). The emergence of Satan as a significant, autonomous, angelic agent is just one example of a diffuse complex of theological ideas, which is to be found in texts which are on the margins of both emerging Christian and Jewish orthodoxy. Indeed, in the Old Testament Satan hardly ever appears as an opponent of God (1 Chron 21:1 may be the beginning of this process). When he does appear, he is an accuser, as in Job and in Zec 3:1. In the New Testament, however, he has become an opponent of the divine purpose (e.g. Matt 4:1–11; 1 Thess 2:18; Rev 12:9) and possibly linked with ‘the god of this world’ (2 Cor 4:4). The state of death in which humans find themselves ( J49:67, E199) is in some ways akin to the ‘body of death’ of Rom 7:24 (‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’). In the Job Engraving 11 and in ‘Elohim Creating Adam’ (B289), as we have seen, the ‘Satanic’ element and the ‘divine’ are intertwined. A human has at birth both the Satanic and the divine. This is anticipated in the view of humanity which sees an individual as composed of a struggle between two opposite spirits from the beginning of creation. It is at the heart of the anthropology enunciated by the writer of the foundation document of the Dead Sea sect, The Manual of Discipline (1QS 3, Vermes 1995: 73–5; and on the ‘evil inclination’ in rabbinic Judaism, Urbach 1975: i.472–82): Now, this God created man to rule the world, and appointed for him two spirits after whose direction he was to walk until the final Inquisition. They are the spirits of truth and perversity. . . . It is to these things that all men are born, and it is to these that all the host of them are heirs throughout their generations. It is in these ways that men needs must walk and it is in these two divisions, according as a man inherits something of each, that all human acts are divided throughout all the ages of eternity. For God has appointed these two things to obtain in equal measure until the final age . . . .

This is akin to Blake’s (and also Jacob Boehme’s) emphasis on the holistic view of humanity (also Winstanley The Saints Paradice, III, CHL i.331; below, p. 168). Blake asserted that humans ‘are born with a devil and an angel’ (Lindberg

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1973: 317, BR435), indicating the positive effects of contrary principles at work in the human soul, as in the Book of Job. This world is not split into opposites, rather those opposites lie deep within the human person. It is a situation where each person has to recognise (to quote another text which is contemporary with the New Testament) ‘the Adam of his own soul’ (Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch 54:19: ‘Adam is therefore not the cause, save only of his own soul, but each of us has been the Adam of his own soul.’). It is no accident that Blake chose the Book of Job to explore this theme, as it expounds more clearly than any other biblical book the contraries in the divine world, as well as those in the individual. There are also two sides of the divine nature: divine mercy and divine justice. The tension between them, exposed in Blake’s theological polemic (explored in Tannenbaum 1981: 201–24), highlights a problem which taxed the greatest theological minds of Christendom: the dualism which is at the heart of the Christian system, in which two opposing forces are ranged against each other, God and the Devil, the heavenly and earthly city (as in Augustine’s ‘City of God’), with the ‘evil’ force in the end overcome and annihilated. The solution of orthodox Christianity involved a form of qualified dualism: the world is at present under the control of the god of this age (cf. 2 Cor 4:4), and will only return to the one true God eschatologically when the powers of evil are destroyed (1 Cor 15:25–8). There remained, however, the ongoing challenge of theodicy: seeking to understand and reconcile God’s mercy and justice, a perennial problem of the monotheistic religions (cf. J17:33, E162). This, according to Blake, is the ‘error’ of the biblical sacred code, roundly condemned in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, plate 4 (E34), that ‘Man has two real existing principles’. Blake would have read in the Book of Job the words ‘all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him’ ( Job 42:12) and known that large parts of the New Testament, with its doctrine that Satan or the Devil was responsible for evil, were at odds with the Book of Job and indeed with most of the Old Testament. BLAKE

AND THE GNOSTICS

Blake has been linked with those who are called ‘gnostic’ (Nuttall 1998; cf. Rudolph 1983; Paley 2003). ‘Gnostic’ is something of a blanket category which covers a variety of different ideas from the Valentinians and Sethians of the second century via those of the Manichees to the Cathars in the medieval period (Dunderberg 2008). These ideas are often categorised by a contrast between an ineffable divinity and a hubristic creator divinity (a demiurge) who is the product of a mistake among the higher powers of the cosmos. At least in terms

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of his hermeneutics, Blake’s approach to biblical texts has many affinities with these ideas (Nuttall 1998: 4–21; O’Regan 2002). The discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945 in Egypt has enabled writers whose views became marginal to emerging orthodox Christianity to speak for themselves, so that we are no longer dependent on the writings of their early orthodox opponents, such as Irenaeus (late second century CE) for our understanding of their views (Layton 1987; Pagels 1988; Robinson 1977; Dunderberg 2008). These texts offer complex mythological explanations of the origin of evil and of the creation of the world, as well as considering the relationship between humanity and the high god and the knowledge (gnosis) offered by the texts which enable the enlightened to realise their true destiny and origin. The elaborate myths of the Nag Hammadi texts are often in the form of esoteric apocalyptic revelations to an apostle. Three things should be noted about them. First, knowledge of the origins of the cosmos is offered as a way of discerning the ambiguous position of humans (reflecting divinity but compromised by their position in a chaotic and incomprehensible world). Secondly, the god of the Jewish law is the product of a huge cosmic mistake, when one of the heavenly powers errs in the production of a creative thought and thereby creates a divine being who becomes a hubristic law-giving god. Thirdly, and this is most important, these systems are not thoroughly dualistic. The myths tell a story of the emanation from one ineffable and supreme deity of the lower, creator god who is thus not unrelated to the highest god. This means that humanity to an extent reflects the image of the highest being. The complex system which we find in Blake’s mythology, and especially his distinction between the demiurgic Angel of the Presence and Jesus, is reminiscent of texts from the second century and onwards. Like Blake, many gnostic writers saw the problem for humanity as one of ignorance, and salvation as being dependent on enlightenment. It involved a reading of the Genesis narratives which in some ways is curiously more literalistic than that of Christian orthodoxy. Put another way, without the shackles of the orthodox hermeneutic, it finds in familiar words a very different kind of sentiment. Take the following passage from The Testimony of Truth, for example, a text which was written in the second or third century and enunciates a radical world-denying religion, polemicising in the process against fellow gnostics as well as orthodox: But God came at the time of [evening], walking in the midst [of] Paradise. When Adam saw him, he hid himself. And he said, ‘Adam, where are you?’ He answered (and) said, ‘I have come under the fig tree.’ And at that very moment, God

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[knew] that he had eaten from the tree of which he had commanded him, ‘Do not eat of it.’ And he said to him, ‘Who is it who has instructed you?’ And Adam answered, ‘The woman whom you have given me.’ And the woman said, ‘It is the serpent who instructed me.’ And he (God) cursed the serpent, and called him ‘devil’. And he said, ‘Behold, Adam has become like one of us, knowing evil and good.’ Then he said, ‘Let us cast him out of Paradise, lest he take from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.’ But what sort is this God? First he envied Adam that he should eat from the tree of knowledge, and, secondly, he said ‘Adam, where are you?’ God does not have foreknowledge, that is, since he did not know from the beginning. And afterwards, he said, ‘Let us cast him out of this place, lest he eat of the tree of life and live forever.’ Surely, he has shown himself to be a malicious envier! And what kind of God is this? For great is the blindness of those who read, and they did not know him. And he said, ‘I am the jealous God; I will bring the sins of the fathers upon the children until three (and) four generations.’ And he said, ‘I will make their heart thick, and I will cause their mind to become blind, that they might not know nor comprehend the things that are said.’ But these things he has said to those who believe in him and serve him! (Translation from Robinson 1977: 411–12)

We see here a close attention to the text of Genesis which leads to the questioning of the supremacy of an apparently vindictive deity, unable to have foreknowledge or the sharing of what was seen as an obvious human good. In The Testimony of Truth we have a telling of the Genesis story sympathetic to the serpent (a feature of many so-called ‘gnostic’ texts where the villains of the biblical narrative become the heroes, a point noted also by Ferber 1985: 120–2). In another text from Nag Hammadi, this time one of the apocryphal gospels, we have an understanding of the origin of religion which is very much akin to what Blake enunciates: God created man. [. . .] men create God. That is the way it is in the world – men make gods and worship their creation. It would be fitting for the gods to worship men! (Gospel of Philip, 24–30; Robinson 1977: 143)

Such views anticipate those we find in ‘The Human Abstract’ (‘The Gods of the earth and sea, Sought thro’ Nature to find this Tree But their search was all in vain: There grows one in the Human Brain’, E27). Blake may have read about

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gnosticism in Irenaeus of Lyons’ major anti-gnostic work, Adversus Haereses. Morton Paley suggests that there were works available which would have given Blake at least the outlines of gnostic beliefs (Paley 2003: 3–7). Indeed, in Joseph Priestley’s book An History of Early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ Priestley summarises ‘that doctrine which most of all distinguished the gnostics in the following age, viz. that the supreme God, the Father of Jesus Christ was not the being who made the world, or gave the law to the Jews’ (Priestley 1786: 144). Of course, Blake could easily have reached his viewpoint by reading the Bible itself with its bewildering accounts of the Angel of the Lord. One further point should be made about both Blake’s work and the gnostic texts. Both struggled to maintain a monistic cosmology (on the links between Blake and Boehme and with gnostic theology, see O’Regan 2002, especially 147–75 and 219–23; Fischer 2004; and on the background in the Kabbalah, Scholem 1991). Behind and beyond the world of flux and the distortions caused by the emphasis on laws and hierarchy lie (in the terminology of the Hypostasis of the Archons) ‘the incorruptibles’ and (in Blake’s terminology) ‘the Eternals’ (e.g. Urizen, 2:5; E70). The myth of a premundane Fall, so central to Milton’s Paradise Lost (not to mention a key element in the theology of a writer like Origen), offered a way of comprehending how the restrictiveness of law shackles the freedom offered by the gospel. The First Book of Urizen – and its companion volumes, The Book of Los and The Book of Ahania – are similar to some of the early gnostic cosmological texts, and set out the reasons for the creation of the world and the creation of humanity. The story represents a struggle between the lawgiver Urizen, a self-absorbed, abstracted divinity and Blake’s hero Los, the prophetic figure of later books, with whom Blake appears to identify himself. Los resists the tyranny of law and transcendent monarchy. What Blake has in common with many of these gnostic systems is the conviction that the synthesis between Old Testament and New Testament, which is the heart of Christian orthodoxy, does not work. This is not, at least in Blake’s case, in any way anti-semitic, for the legal parts of the Old Testament, especially the Decalogue, were promoted by Christians. It is very much part of the Christianity which Blake knew, and it is that part of Christian belief which has provoked his critique. Indeed, far from being anti-Jewish, Blake would have approved of the ways in which the rabbis engaged creatively with the biblical texts, whether in terms of their story-telling (haggadah) or legal discussions (halakah). Even the legal debates evince that kind of openness and freedom from literalism, whether in the Bible or in precedent, which might foreclose options for later interpreters.

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Anyone who reads Blake will note, especially in the explicit statements of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, that dualism is the target of Blake’s critique. Such elements are apparent throughout the Blake corpus, whether it is the necessary ‘contraries’ of heaven and hell, the messianic status of Satan, or the inclusion of Newton, Bacon and Locke among the ‘Chariots of the Almighty’ ( J98:8, E257). Alongside this, however, is the contrast between the lawgiver and the creator, on the one hand, and the Human Divine and life in the Divine Body, on the other. This is nowhere better seen than in ‘The Everlasting Gospel’, where the Angel of the Presence takes on, if not a malign influence, then a ‘contrary’ in the divine economy. The continuity between Blake’s idiosyncratic myth and the theology of the Bible is a reminder that there is nothing special about the words of the allusive texts of the Bible. Indeed, in The Four Zoas, Blake stresses that his own myths were already known to John ‘on Patmos Isle’ (FZviii:595–8, E385–6, quoted below, p. 146; cf. M40:22, E142). The images of the Bible, just as much as Blake’s myths, are all a part of the exercise of the ‘poetic genius’, or spirit of prophecy, as it disturbs widely held assumptions and opens up new intellectual horizons. In ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ and in the Job series of engravings Blake abandons his own mythical figures and uses the Bible to tell a similar story to the one he had told in The First Book of Urizen. Los and Urizen are roughly equivalent to Jesus and Jehovah on the one hand and the Angel of the Divine Presence on the other. What is crucial for understanding Blake’s work (and for the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, also) is that the contrasting, and conflicting descriptions and actions of the divinity are not to be understood as some kind of metaphysical battle in which the outcome is the negation of one power by another. It is a reflection of the nature of reality of the divine, as well as the human, world. What is true of humanity (that there are contraries) is true of the divinity also. The emphasis on one characteristic of divinity (law-giver or righteous judge) leads to the neglect of the contrary characteristic (merciful parent, for example) and leads to the kind of distorted ideology which Blake caricatures in ‘Nobodaddy’ (E471, and see also untitled verse, E499–500). Within emerging Christianity, indebted as it was to the apocalyptic writings of Judaism, the ways in which evil in the world and the multitude of divine beings were construed was through a form of dualism. In this there was a struggle between light and darkness, good and evil, which would only be resolved in the future with the triumph of God. Blake accepts that kind of struggle, but refuses to allow that it is something which is to be explained in terms of good and bad principles in the universe. Rather, he seeks to explain it by reference to differing

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kinds of divine activity, both of which are needed in some kind of dialectical relationship, to achieve spiritual maturity and any kind of change, political included. To recapitulate: Blake anticipates questions about the nature of monotheism in antiquity that have been raised by several biblical scholars in the last few decades (Scholem 1991; Segal 1978; Fossum 1985; Hurtado 1997; Ashton 1998; Rowland 1982: 94–112; Barker 1992). Blake does not need to have been aware of modern biblical scholarship to work out the exegetical possibilities which were inherent in the Bible itself, and which he seems to have exploited for his own purposes. Of course, the emergence of a contrast between an exalted divinity and lesser divine powers, and the opposition between God and Satan, are all deeply rooted in the Bible. In the chapter on the Job sequence, Blake interpreted the Angel of the Divine Presence as an omnipotent monarch and Satan as an agent of Job’s conversion, both of whom are part of the divine economy. Blake noticed that the Bible’s view of God is not easily reducible to the summary in Deuteronomy 6:4 (‘Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD’), as other parts of the Bible, especially the Hebrew Bible, suggest that, whilst God may have been the ultimate source of power in the universe, he was not the only one to possess and wield such power.

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Blake and ‘The Bible of Hell’ The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The First Book of Urizen and drawings for the Book of Enoch In this chapter we shall consider three of Blake’s works, two early and one probably late. In them we find themes similar to those in the Job engravings: the challenge to the religion of the book, divine transcendence, divine punishment in judgement, and the overriding authority of the Bible. In the illuminated books, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and The First Book of Urizen, Blake questions the received wisdom of Christian orthodoxy concerning the authoritative status of the Bible and demonstrates its negative effects. In the Enoch sketches he resorts to a book which makes only a fleetingly explicit appearance in the Christian Bible ( Jude 14) to offer another account of degeneration in the world, based on Genesis 6. This complements the Genesis 3 account of the origins of evil and its effects. In so doing he draws attention to the ways in which violence done to humans by divine beings became part of human culture. THE MARRIAGE

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The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a brilliantly exuberant, and often amusing text which has one major purpose, expressed succinctly in the words, ‘if the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite’ (MHH14, E39). Its change of perspective, different genres (proverbs, stories, and swipes at Blake’s former mentor, Emmanuel Swedenborg) all conspire to get the reader to look at things differently. As such, it is doing for the reader what Blake discovered in the Book of Job. It shakes the readers/viewers out of their torpor and complacency. Blake lived in a world where people told stories of their conversion, whether they were evangelicals or Methodists, and Blake’s text is a conversion text. It is not an account of his own conversion but a text which is geared to getting those who engage with it to change: to see that their view of Christian doctrine is too narrow and that ‘Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse: not from rules’ (MHH23–4; E43). On being convinced that Jesus

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subverted the Law of Moses, the angel becomes a devil and sides with those opposing rules and regulations and rejecting views of religion as exclusive and condemnatory (MHH24, E43)! In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake takes on both conventional biblical hermeneutics and the Bible itself. Blake challenges biblical dualism and its separation of God and the human person into different opposing entities, one of which negates the other. He affirms that the two are inextricably bound and that their interaction leads to growth: ‘Without contraries is no progression’ (MHH3, E34). It is a thoroughgoing attack on the biblical theme of holiness which supposes a neat separation between sacred and profane. Its concluding words indicate that ‘every thing that lives is Holy’ (MHH27, E45). It is also a challenge to biblical literalism. Blake writes of reading the Bible in its ‘infernal or diabolical sense’ (MHH24, E44). This is probably a play on words of his erstwhile mentor, Emmanuel Swedenborg, who stressed the importance of the internal sense of the Bible. The hint of fire in the word ‘infernal’ is a clever application of the process of engraving to the interpretative process. Just as Blake worked with fiery acid to produce words on copper plates, so also interpretation needed to move beyond the surface, which is burnt away, to a more imaginative engagement with texts and images.1 To challenge the Bible, however, Blake saw that more was needed than merely offering another interpretation. The Bible was part of the problem rather than the solution. Blake did not see himself as an exegete, in the sense of one who systematically expounded the Bible on the basis of received wisdom. He found it necessary to write new books which would show up the problems that already existed in the Bible. The result is Blake’s ‘the Bible of Hell which the world shall have whether they will or no’ (MHH24, E44). There is much stress on themes of energy, delight and desire, and a protest at restriction – hence a deliberate contrast with the supposed language of the rather ‘prissy’ angels. The ‘Bible of Hell’ is probably to be identified with The First Book of Urizen, whose opening image indicates the object of Blake’s critique: a divinely sanctioned text which is unimaginatively interpreted and slavishly obeyed. Blake reimagines the first book of the Bible, Genesis, and challenges the way in which it has been interpreted and has created negative effects. As has been suggested, he exploited the fissures in the depiction of God within the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) and exploited the tensions in the biblical text, to challenge dominant readings (on Blake’s probable indebtedness to the suggestions of Alexander Geddes about the fragmentary character of the Pentateuch, see McGann 1986 and Tannenbaum 1982: 203–7).

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‘As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its advent’ are the opening words of The Marriage Plate 3, E34. In Copy F (Pierpont Morgan Library) Blake has written ‘1790’ above the words ‘new heaven’, drawing attention thereby to the year 1757. That may be a reference to Swedenborg’s proclamation of 1757 as the year of the Last Judgement (Paley 1999: 33), but, perhaps more significantly, it was also the year of Blake’s birth. This announces that Blake’s ‘time’ has now come, just as it did in Mark 1:15, where Jesus marks the opening of his ministry with the words: ‘the time, kairos, is fulfilled’ (cf. Jn 13:1; Jn 7:6). It is the moment when there is opened up ‘the return of Adam into Paradise’ (MHH3, E34). Blake’s convictions as found in The Marriage come closest of all to exhibiting what Karl Mannheim has called ‘the chiliastic mentality’, in which is manifest the moment that ‘the present becomes the breach through which what was previously inward bursts out and suddenly takes hold of the outer world and transforms it’. This is not concern ‘with the millennium that is to come; what is important . . . is that it has happened here and now’ (Mannheim 1960: 192–8). As we shall see, Joanna Southcott saw herself as the Woman Clothed with the Sun, and Richard Brothers as the Prince of the Hebrews, prophesied by Ezekiel. All of this echoes the stories of Jesus’ life when the Kingdom of God was not some pious hope but already a present reality (Luke 11:20). The Marriage of Heaven and Hell sets the scene for Blake’s approach to the Bible (Nuttall 1998: 230–50). The title itself, repudiating the dualistic tenor of much mainstream Christian theology, tells us about the book. ‘All Bibles or sacred codes’, Blake writes, ‘have been the causes of the following Errors 1. That Man has two real existing principles: Viz: a Body & a Soul. 2. That Energy, call’d Evil, is alone from the Body; & that Reason, call’d good, is alone from the Soul’. Not at all, says Blake: ‘Energy is the only Life, and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy’ (MHH4, E34). Blake regards both heaven and hell as fundamental modes of human experience, for both ‘joy and woe’ are closely intertwined in each human soul. Rejection of one of these means rejecting part of oneself and as a result ending up being impoverished and living a life of distortion and even destruction. While the body/soul dualism has a long pedigree in Christian theology, it is actually not all that prominent in the New Testament. The doctrine of ‘the immortality of the soul’, for example, is found in a deutero-canonical book (apocryphal), the Wisdom of Solomon 3:1. Apart from some hints in passages like Romans 7:15–22 and 2 Cor 5:1–4, the notion that there is an immortal part of the human person which will enjoy some bodiless existence eternally is not a significant part of the New

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Testament, and certainly not at all prominent in the Hebrew Bible. It is no accident, therefore, that both Christianity and Judaism stress resurrection of the body rather than immortality of the soul. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is difficult to characterise. It has obvious affinities with the Wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible, especially Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and, in the Apocrypha, the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach (Ecclesiasticus). The ‘Proverbs of Hell’ mirror what we find in these works, even if the underlying sentiments are rather different. In the biblical exemplars, it is the practical wisdom which characterises good order and propriety, involving avoidance of folly and anything which will lead people astray from the paths of righteousness. The editors of the Blake Trust edition of The Marriage aptly contrast the biblical proverbs with Blake’s ‘Proverbs of Hell’: Many of the proverbs in the Old Testament are directed at the education of young men in the devious ways of a tempting world, warning of the hazards ahead and recommending the virtue of knowing when to stop. Developing the potential, including the enticing sexual potential, in the themes of energy, delight and desire, broached in earlier plates, Blake’s proverbs recommend learning by doing, including doing ‘Enough! Or Too Much’ (10:17, E38), and doing it spontaneously with faith in an inner gospel that what one wants is what one needs. (Eaves, Essick and Viscomi 1998: 126; cf. Hatton 2008)

Aphorisms form a prominent part of Wisdom literature (exhibited in the contrasts between wisdom and folly in the opening chapters of the biblical book of Proverbs). Biblical proverbs are not constructed abstraction but the result of observation of ‘minute particulars’. Such observation does not always lead to neat systems, and it confounds the inclination of the systematiser, who wishes to tie up all loose ends. Although The Marriage has an overall aim, its variety of genre is initially perplexing. What is more, it differs from the biblical Wisdom literature in juxtaposing aphorisms with narrative and eschatological treatise. In this respect, its closest analogue is the hypothetical biblical book, familiar to modern biblical scholars, and known as Q (Tuckett 1996; Robinson, Hoffmann and Kloppenborg 2000). It is likely that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are dependent on the Gospel of Mark, probably the earliest extant gospel. In addition, they have access to other material, much of which they have in common. It is this common material (which includes passages such as the Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer) that belongs to the source Q. Its mix of

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aphorisms, narrative, and a final eschatological flourish in some ways parallels The Marriage. Of course, Blake did not know the Q hypothesis, but he could have seen how in both Matthew and Luke (but especially the latter) sayings and stories and eschatological predictions sit alongside each other, especially in a long section such as Luke 9:51–17:37, without any obvious order or rationale. The title page of The Marriage, with its hints of the Garden of Eden and the delight in ‘coupledom’, and the eating of the forbidden fruit, expresses Blake’s fundamental objection to the religion of the angels, and the religion of moral virtue: the injunction ‘Thou shalt not’ (cf. Gen 2:17). On the first page of the work there is reference to the just man and the villain and to alternative paths, one that is easy and one difficult. By the end of the page the place of difficulty, the desert, is a place of growth. The enigmatic opening speaks of being driven into the wilderness, into that region, the desert, space, where renewal comes. In the Bible the wilderness is a place of particular importance, as the story of Israel’s wanderings in Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy make clear, also evident in the allusion to this part of Israel’s experience in a passage like Hosea 2:14. The desert and the barren land become the place where the delights of Paradise may be found, something which the carefree and joyous illumination offers. It contrasts with the desolation implicit in some of the words. It is the place where Blake believed Byron had found himself after writing ‘Cain: A Mystery’ in 1821: ‘To Lord Byron in the Wilderness. What doest thou here Elijah?’ (The Ghost of Abel, 1822, E270–2). To be there and to be like Elijah meant the one who ‘comprehends all the Prophetic Characters; he is seen in his fiery Chariot bowing before the throne of the Saviour’ (‘A Vision of the Last Judgment’, E560). So, The Marriage starts with what appears to be a contrast between the way of the righteous and that of the villain, as in Jewish Wisdom literature (taken up in the New Testament in Matthew 7:13–14, the beginning of the Didache, 1:1–2, and the Epistle of Barnabas, 18:1), but Blake subverts this by suggesting that the dualistic contrast should be seen as the ‘contraries’ at work in one human soul, rather than being mutually exclusive paths, one of which should be taken and the other avoided, what he elsewhere calls ‘negations’ ( J10:10; 17:33–4, E153 and 162). The ‘villain’ leads the ‘righteous’ into the wilderness of intellectual and social transformation. The just man and the villain are two aspects of the human person, therefore (‘Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul’, E7). A similar point is made also in Blake’s Notebook where in ‘Motto to the Songs of Innocence and of Experience’ we read (E499, Erdman and Moore 1977: N101):

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The Good are attracted by Mens perceptions And Think not for themselves Till Experience teaches them to catch And to cage the Fairies & Elves And then the Knave begins to snarl And the Hypocrite to howl And all his good Friends shew their private ends And the Eagle is known from the Owl

The just man (corresponding to the rather narrow-minded, puritanical angel in the poem) is driven into the desert by the arising of the ‘villainous part’ of himself. This resembles the Job sequence (and indeed the situation of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4:33–7). Job, likewise, is prodded out of what he had hitherto deemed to be the path of righteousness (what he did ‘continually’) and, as a result of his experience in his ‘desert’, he can move towards a more integrated existence. In part, The Marriage represents Blake’s repudiation of his mentor Swedenborg, who is mentioned on several occasions (Plates 3, 21–3, E34 and E42-3). Blake regarded Swedenborg, the inspiration behind the one church to which the adult Blake had any affiliation, as at best a messenger of resurrection, but Blake, like the Risen Christ, had escaped from the grave clothes (probably meaning Swedenborg’s writings, cf. John 20:6–7). He considered that he had now escaped from the bands in which Swedenborgianism threatened to straitjacket him, even if Swedenborg was, John the Baptist-like, a witness to something better. In language which is reminiscent of the language of the New Testament, which saw the present as a time of the fulfilment of hope (2 Corinthians 6:2), now, according to Blake, is the messianic time. Adam re-enters paradise, and the ‘cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at the tree of life’ (MHH14, E39, Gen 3:24 and Ezek 28:14, 16). It is the moment when ‘the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite, and holy, whereas it now appears finite & corrupt’ (MHH14, E39). Blake’s work by its various strategies of persuasion can bring about a cleansing of human perception, tainted by theological ideology: ‘if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite’ (MHH14, E39). The return to Paradise (cf. Rev 22:1–2) means the cessation of that blight affecting a way of thinking, which divides and mars the ability to see what makes for life. The heart of Blake’s life and work is then enunciated: ‘Without Contraries is no progression’ (MHH3,

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E34). The problem with religion is that it interprets contraries as opposites rather than offering the dialectic between them as the motor of life. The essential dualism of Christian orthodoxy is thereby rejected. Blake protests at the way in which the Messiah of orthodox Christianity is linked with the restraint of desire, and energy and desire are linked with Satan – quite contrary to the revolutionary fervour of the accounts of earliest Christianity in parts of the New Testament. Instead, he appeals to the Book of Job, in which, as we have seen, Satan is not an opponent of God but part of the divine economy, not some independent entity in the universe opposed to God. This is something which Milton profoundly misunderstood, according to Blake, because of his allegiance to orthodox Christianity. Nevertheless, in his description of an energetic, heroic Satan, he did grasp something of the true significance of ‘contraries’, as Blake understood it. According to Blake, Jesus understood the proper relationship between desire and reason, the latter being the architect for the use of the creative energy of the former. Without desire there would be nothing other than an empty shell, devoid of the divine spirit. Blake rejects the idea that the Messiah is reason, for in fact in Milton’s portrayal, it is Satan who more closely resembles the true Messiah, or agent of salvation (MHH5, E34). Thus, Blake describes the proper place which reason has in the whole process of life. It is a secondary faculty dependent on what has been created by the energy of desire: ‘This is shewn in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to send the comforter or Desire that Reason may have Ideas to build on’ (MHH6, E35). The problem of perception is explored when the narrator is shown his ‘eternal lot’ by his angelic companion (MHH17–20, E41–2). At the end of the journey with the angel the terrible Leviathan appears and is described in frightening detail. This apparition suddenly disappears, however, and the narrator finds himself on a pleasant riverbank in the moonlight without the distorting perspective of the angelic companion and free of the horrible view he would impose. What had appeared so terrible was nothing but ‘a reptile of the mind’ (MHH 19, E42). In other words, the apparition was the creation of a narrowminded religious perception which views the lot of reprobates, like the poet, as destined to be tormented by nightmarish kinds of creatures. ‘All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics’, writes the narrator (MHH19, E42). The problem is focused, therefore, precisely on the espousal of a dualistic way of thinking about heaven and hell and the punishments destined for the wicked, which leads to a belief in eternal torment and bliss rather than the ongoing engagement with ‘Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul’ (E7) .

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The lesson that the angel has to learn, difficult as it might be, given that he thinks that Blake is imposing upon him, is that when the Bible is used in the church it is not a way of salvation and liberation, but rather leads to conflict, militating against the very mutuality which it is supposed to promote. The situation, Blake suggests, resembles strong monkeys devouring the weaker, feigning kindness (a chilling reminder of the ways in which torture took place in order to ‘save’ men’s and women’s eternal souls as they died at the stake as heretics). The problem with the Angel, and indeed the religious system to which he is committed, is ‘Aristotle’s Analytics’ (MHH 20, E42). This is not the world of imagination but of the supremacy of reason and consequently the quenching of the spirit. It is the divine spirit revealing itself in the embrace of heaven and hell which can open up new paths rather than repeat the old platitudes. In another ‘Memorable Fancy’ Jesus is invoked as the iconoclastic rule-breaker. Here the Bible is used to confound the defence made of orthodoxy by the angel (MHH, Plates 22–4, E43–4, quoted below, p. 191 ). This declaration about Jesus finally convinces the Angel, who then capitulates to the Devil’s side! At several points in The Marriage the angels are confronted with the effects of their pious beliefs, whether by unseemly fights over the Bible, or, as here, the fact that the muchprized holy book actually suggests the exact opposite of what the angels believe. In some ways, this is the climax of the book, when the hero of the Christian Bible is shown to be on the devil’s side, and the angels, by supporting the narrowminded religion, find themselves siding with Jesus’ opponents in seeing him on the side of Beelzebub (Matthew 9:34; 12:24). This is where Jesus had found himself to be, or as Blake put it, ‘Christ died as an unbeliever’ (‘Annotations to Watson’s Apology’, E614). The dialogue between the angel and the devil leads to the angel ending up as a devil ‘embracing the flame of fire & he was consumed and arose as Elijah’ (MHH24, E43). Thereafter the converted angel becomes Blake’s companion as they read the Bible together ‘in its infernal or diabolical sense which the world shall have if they behave well’ (MHH24, E44). This brilliant, and amusing, passage enables us to see yet again that there are many elements in the gospels which only underline Blake’s point that ‘Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse: not from rules’ (MHH24, E43). Blake realised that Jesus was provocative and problematic to his contemporaries because he was a dissident and sat loose to conventional wisdom. The shocking character of the outrageous proverb ‘Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires’ (MHH10, E38) might have been directed at pious sentiments. The juxtaposition of the outrageous with the ordinary is typical of The

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Marriage as a whole. It is not having unacted desires that is the problem, but nursing them. Modern psychology would agree with Blake. Harbouring desires might mean that wrath ‘nursed’ and cosseted only breaks out elsewhere in the human person, perhaps in as lethal a form as the murder of an infant. Blake here makes one of his most outrageous statements, to effect in the reader a concern with the traditional religious ideas of repression. The rejection of the distinctions demanded by the practice of holiness and repression is the heart of Blake’s campaign against mainstream religion with its constraint of desire. But by the end of the 1790s Blake was aware of the consequences of revolutionary energy in France: violence, death and destruction. When he wrote The Marriage he was seeing the consequences of restraint all around him and the way such pent-up energy only led to the risk of a terrible outburst later. The work concludes with the words ‘For every thing that lives is Holy’ (MHH27, E45). Blake here returns to the theme with which he started and completes his summary of religion with the clearest of assertions that dualistic thinking is to be rejected and the divine grace discovered in all things. At the close there is an eschatological climax. This reminds us what an amazing jumble of genres the work is. It starts with that ringing heraldic flourish, then moves via proverbs, a journey to the underworld, and an account of the angel’s conversion to the ringing declaration of a new age when it will be seen that ‘one law for the lion and the ox is oppression’ (MHH24, E44). The prophetic words anticipate America A Prophecy, in which the fledgling republic promises a new dawn. The old-fashioned religion of Europe based as it is on ‘ten commands’ is to be stamped to dust and the cry will go up ‘Empire is no more!’ (MHH27, E45). The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a remarkable work and kaleidoscopic in its effect, but if one had to offer an epitome of it, it would be the words ‘if the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite’ (MHH14, E39). What the work seems to offer is a variety of strategies, literary and other, to enable the reader to change. The text is itself about change. It explores the journey of the conventional just man through the eye-opening experience of the ways of unrighteousness to new understanding. Also, the priggish angel discovers that his religious hero, Jesus, is far from being an upright member of religious society and as a result the angel becomes a devil. The sequence of images starts with an idyll, turns to an image of a man having his world turned upside down, and ends with an image of Nebuchadnezzar eating grass like an ox, through which experience he discovers the truth about himself and the world (cf. Daniel 4:33–7). The different genres contribute to this variety of effect. The aphorisms, picking up a biblical genre of a book like Proverbs, are alternately

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outrageous and tantalizing. The intellect is challenged by the mix of the outrageous and the sublime. The ‘Memorable Fancies’ offer tales of different kinds which in different ways tell of change of perception. The narrator finds himself led into a hellish place only to find it disappear when the theological fantasy of his companion evaporates. Equally, the narrow-minded angel has his horizon expanded when he finds that his upright Jesus turns out to be nothing of the kind. From beginning to end the aim of The Marriage is (to put it in religious terms) ‘conversion’, the transformation of attitude, perception and intellectual horizon to embrace that which is broader than reason alone can embrace. BLAKE

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Blake was remarkably prescient about the interpretation of the opening chapter of Genesis. Nearly one hundred years before theories about the origin of the Pentateuch, attributing some to a priestly source, Blake recognises the priestly character of elements in the opening chapter of the book (McGann 1986). Here is the basis of false religion maintained by priestcraft which he also enunciated in ‘The Human Abstract’ (E27). Genesis 1 is now widely believed to be a priestly creation which may well have taken place during the elite’s exile in Babylon in the sixth century BCE (Westermann 1994). The characteristics of this redaction include a creation myth. Creation is seen as separation and by divine fiat rather than birth or evolution. As in the prophecy of Second Isaiah (Isa 40–55), written round about the same time as the first chapter of Genesis, there is the notion of God conquering the forces of chaos by bringing order out of chaos (Psa 104:9; Gen 1:2; cf. Isa. 51:9–10). There is separation of God from humanity, particularly as the result of the expulsion from Eden, where communion between God and humanity was idyllic. This is shattered by disobedience to the divine fiat (Gen 2:16; 3:2–3). The result of disobedience is personal and social disintegration as creation degenerates and violence comes into the world (3:14–19; cf. 4:8). The separation of God from humanity anticipates a feature which is characteristic of both Judaism and Christianity: holiness. This involves the distinction between sacred and profane, between that which is clean and that which is unclean (8:20), between two races (Cain as compared with Abel; Ham as compared with Shem), and concerning ways of eating which are acceptable, and those which are not. The superhuman character of evil is only hinted at without explanation: the serpent (3:1) and the sons of God (6:2). This sense of separation is also evident in the two frontispieces of the late Illustrations to Genesis (B828 1 and 2; Bindman 1977: 219; Paley 2003: 260–3).

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Here the title Genesis is separated into the three radicals of the word, spread down the page from top to bottom. This suggests that the story of Genesis, of creation, moves from the freedom of the Spirit at the top of the page to a life bounded by rules, regulations and priestcraft. This is more evident in the first title page (B828 1), itself an image similar to that dancing at the top of Plate 3 of Urizen. One wonders if this is Blake’s attempt to imitate the opening of Genesis in Hebrew. As it moves down via the divinities (God the Father and the Son) it comes to Adam standing in a pose similar to the angel standing on sea and land in the watercolour of Revelation 10:1–2, ‘Angel Lifting a Hand to Heaven’ (c. 1805; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, B518). The loins of this figure are covered with a Doric-style pillar which is the capital of ‘I’ of GenesIs. This mix of the druidical column with the consequence of the fall (the man and the woman knew they were naked – Genesis 3:7) points down to the four living creatures, the Zoas, most clearly seen in B828 2. The Zoas function in Blake’s mythology as aspects of the human personality, and in Christian tradition since Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses iii.11.8) they have represented the Four Evangelists (Matthew: human; Mark: lion; Luke: ox; and John: eagle, Paley 2003: 262–3). These have become fragmented and disordered after the fall, and the story of the reintegration is the story of redemption. In the centre is the human figure. It is significant that the letter is ‘I’. The focus on the ego means in Blake’s terms ‘selfhood’, and the consequence of selfhood is separation from the divine world, which becomes an abstract entity ‘above’, while animal instincts remain ‘below’. What Genesis actually means, therefore, is ‘separation’ not integration, the imposition of order rather than the engagement with contraries. In the Illustrated Manuscript of Genesis some indication of Blake’s attempt to offer his understanding of Genesis is evident in the omission of ‘and God saw that it was good’ from Gen 1: 18, and possibly also 1:25 (Paley 2003: 263, B828 3) and from the extant chapter headings, which extend to Chapter 4: ‘the Creation of the Natural Man’; ‘the Natural Man divided into Male & Female & of the Tree of Life & of the Tree of Good & Evil’; ‘of the Sexual nature & its Fall into Generation & Death’; and ‘How Generation & death took possession of the natural Man & the Forgiveness of Sins written upon the Murderers Forehead’ (B828, 3–10). What is striking about these headings is the way in which Genesis 3 is interpreted as sexual desire which declines into generation and death. The temptation of Eve in the Paradise Lost series (1808; Boston Museum of Fine Art, B536 9) is clearly a sexual temptation, more obviously so than in the earlier tempera of the ‘Temptation of Eve’ (1799–1800; Victoria and Albert Museum,

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B379). Blake seems to accept the hermaphroditic character of original humanity. Indeed, the different aspects of human personality (the rational and the sensual) are linked with Adam and Eve respectively (Bindman 1977:190–1). Whereas the depiction of Elohim creating Adam (1795; Tate Gallery, London, B289) suggests ‘evil’ already being part of human nature, the depiction of the temptation of Eve has the serpent entwining Eve alone. Two aspects of the Genesis account are particularly stressed by Blake. Firstly, the Fall has already started with the split of the natural man into male and female. Secondly, Cain is not so much a villain as a perpetual reminder to humanity of the fundamental place which forgiveness of sins has in human life, something that is explored in more detail in The Ghost of Abel (E270–2; Paley 2003: 265). THE FIRST BOOK

OF

URIZEN

What marks this illuminated book out from most others is the ‘scripture-like’ format, in which the pages are laid out in double columns whenever there is writing to be found. There is a very deliberate attempt to emulate the Bible. There are other similarities, particularly with the Book of Genesis. Whereas Genesis proclaims that God saw what had been created, ‘and it was good’, in Urizen there is a sevenfold, doleful repetition of the words, ‘And a first age passed over, and a state of dismal woe’ (e.g. at 10:44, E75). We have seen how in the Illustrations to Genesis (B828, 1–11; Paley 2003: 260–3) Blake omits ‘and God saw that it was good’ from the text of Gen 1:18 (and possibly also 1:25). Urizen confirms the message that this description of creation is not to be rejoiced over, but instead lamented. The frontispiece of The First Book of Urizen tells us much about the purpose of what follows. The strange story of a premundane struggle is set in the context of a remote, yet patriarchal scribe, busy copying and producing the material for sacred codes. Here is probably the ‘Bible of Hell’, to which Blake refers in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (MHH24, E44). It is the sacred code copied in heaven which is imitated and applied by the priests and kings on earth (Europe, Plate 12/14, E64). The human consequences of what is revealed in the heavens are evident in the image and in the opening words of the book: Of the primeval Priest’s assum’d power, When Eternals spurn’d back his religion And gave him a place in the north, Obscure, shadowy, void, solitary.

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Eternals! I hear your call gladly, Dictate swift winged words, & fear not To unfold your dark visions of torment. (Urizen, 2:1–4, punctuation as Keynes 222, E70)

Here the poet explains what the book is about – the origins of hierarchy. The Eternals summon the poet to offer an apocalypse of the sinister doings which explain the workings of the world. The image on the frontispiece has the bearded deity (so reminiscent of the deity in the Job engravings) with eyes closed, transcribing, mechanically, from one book to another, following the contents of the book with his big toe. We see from a later plate that the contents of the book are indecipherable to any but the deity and the priests who are in his thrall. The page turns out to have brightly coloured smudges and parallels the nonsensical Hebrew on the tablets of stone in Milton, Plate 15. The prominence of the big toe is indicative of Blake’s attention to ‘minute particulars’. A reference to the big toe occurs in the account of the ordination of Aaron and his sons in Exodus 29:20 (‘Then shalt thou kill the ram, and take of his blood, and put it upon the tip of the right ear of Aaron, and upon the tip of the right ear of his sons, and upon the thumb of their right hand, and upon the great toe of their right foot’). It should come as no surprise to us that Blake had noted this and underlined the priestly character of the divinity by giving prominence to the big toe as the means of following the text. In terms of content, Urizen has many similarities with some of the so-called gnostic cosmogonies written in the second century CE, and later, in which the origins of evil and the creation of the world are related to a premundane ‘error’ by one, or more, of the divine beings (cf. Chapter 4, p. 81). The way in which Blake contrasts what he calls ‘the Eternals’ and the lower divinities in his premundane myth reflects the similar contrast between ‘the incorruptibles’ and the lower divinities in ‘The Hypostasis of the Archons’, one of the texts discovered in 1945 in Nag Hammadi, Egypt. In addition, the assertion by Urizen in Chapter 2:5 (E72) ‘I alone, even I’ is very similar to the cry of Samael, based on Isaiah 45:5, ‘I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me’ (‘Hypostasis of the Archons’ 86; Robinson 1977: 153), and it is tempting to find some conceptual borrowing. Perhaps Blake may have got to know the writings of Irenaeus, the late second-century CE writer and champion of emerging Christian orthodoxy, who quotes extensively from gnostic texts like the Apocryphon of John (though there are other possible ways in which he could have been in touch with such ideas; Nuttall 1998: 216–17).

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Blake’s mythology in Urizen is not the language of the Christian tradition but a specially coined mythology, inspired by the Bible, functioning as a heuristic lens through which to look at theology and ethics afresh. In this work of 1794 the challenge to the Bible is made indirectly. It is more direct in the Job engravings and in the roughly contemporary ‘Everlasting Gospel’ (below, p. 182). Blake regarded his mythology as being in essential continuity with the Bible (FZviii:597–601, E385). What we find in Urizen is a sorry tale about the way in which a religion based on the sanctions came into being. It is connected with disobedience to a divine law and marked a departure from the purpose of ‘The Eternals’. Los, often the prophetic hero in Blake’s work, labours to find a way to minimise the effects of this (Plates 6–7(7–8), E74). The story, therefore, is less an explanation of why there is a dualistic universe, and more about why it is that a religion of sin and death has triumphed at the expense of one based on light, life, imagination and human relationships. What Urizen does is to remind readers of the biblical books that any neat story line is less obvious than appears at first sight. Thus, the so-called creation of the world reveals no ‘eternal laws’. These turn out to be a false religion masquerading as truth. As in much else in Blake’s work, there is, in the portrayal of the creation of Urizen, an ‘unmasking’ of the divinely appointed ‘orders of creation’, which seem to be the glue which holds society together, but are shown to be a massive distraction from what will make for human flourishing. This is because it is based on abstraction and self-absorption and not on relationships, which are at the very heart of all that makes for a better world. As in Blake’s other prophetic works, Los has a significant role to play. In later works he is a prophet, but here he is a mediator between the Eternals and the lower gods (as Enoch in the Book of Enoch, chs 12–15). In this role he is ambiguous. He watches out for the usurpation of power by Urizen, and functions as a kind of sentinel for the ‘Eternals’ (Urizen 5:39, E73). Nevertheless, he is not utterly antithetical to Urizen. It is out of Los’s side that Urizen comes, suggesting that the prophetic and the mental fight is ambiguous and is not unrestrained, for it also includes ‘reining in’ a preoccupation with abstraction in order to ensure that the prophetic imagination would not be completely snuffed out. Thus, Los binds Orc, the fruit of his union with Enitharmon, so the imaginative and the prophetic is found circumscribing the revolutionary potential of the infant Orc, who is depicted, like the Eternals, dancing in fiery freedom through the flames (Copy D, Plate 3). The position of Los reflects Blake’s own struggles, devoted as he was to the productions of his own ‘books of brass’ to undermine the authoritative power of

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the book of brass. Los’s creativity, his ambivalence with regard to revolutionary energy, and the restriction of the effects of abstractedness, aptly summarise Blake’s own role, as he labours with the book to dethrone the book and replace it with images which might bring life. Indeed, when we can see what is written on the page of the book (as in Plate 4), the signs mean nothing. Here Blake challenges the perspicuity of a sign-system, prioritising images, as he was to do later, and tellingly, in the Job sequence. Elsewhere in the Blake corpus we find a similar challenge to the transparency of a biblical text. In the dramatic image in Plate 15 of Milton, the code of an Urizenic figure is shattered as he is confronted by a man under the caption ‘To Annihilate the Self-hood of Deceit and False Forgiveness’, accompanied by minstrels rejoicing (cf. Luke 15:10). Indeed, when Milton says ‘I go to Eternal Death!’, the poem continues ‘Eternity shudder’d’ (M14(15):30, E108). The point about the tablets of stone is that the Hebrew, unlike that found on Plate 11 of the Job sequence, is nonsense. Whether this is because the fracture of the tablets of stone has also fractured the sense, or that Blake is wanting to make the point that the biblical text is a sign system, dependent on priests and kings who have determined its tradition of interpretation, is unclear. What is clear, however, is that the act of self-annihilation and the forgiveness of sins is itself more important than the obedience to a sign system, however much it may have been hallowed by time and memory. The threefold fall of the serpent-entwined figures on Plate 5 of Urizen anticipates both Job’s dreams and the fall of Satan in the Job engravings. In both of these we find attempts to drag down the would-be righteous man, one who, to use the language of Blake’s later work, is dominated by Selfhood. It is the end of that which had been the cause of Job’s long excursion into false religion and the painful process of extrication from it (the twists and turns of the tortuous spiritual journey being explored further in Jerusalem). Plate 20(18) anticipates the dire situation in the world when the religion of Urizen gets a foothold in human culture. The isolation of Urizen, and the terrible coldness and self-absorption of a life turned in on itself (well represented in the image on Plate 6), represents one of the key aspects of Blake’s hermeneutic. What he took from the Bible was an account not of a remote, self-contained divinity, or for that matter a completely self-contained individual human person, but relationship, in which forgiveness of sins, or ‘opposition’ as ‘true friendship’ (MHH20, E42), is the key not only to human, but also divine, existence. Without that, all that was left was a cold, isolated voice, unrelated to any other – no more chilling description is offered than that of the ‘Unknown, unprolific, self-clos’ed’ Urizen at the start of the

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poem. This kind of abstracted self-absorption produces laws imposed on all and the resulting suppression of heterogeneity: Lo! I unfold my darkness: and on/This rock, place with strong hand the Book/Of eternal brass, written in my solitude./Laws of peace, of love, of unity:/Of pity, compassion, and forgiveness./Let each chuse one habitation:/His ancient infinite mansion:/One command, one joy, one desire,/One curse, one weight, one measure/One King, one God, one Law. (Urizen 2:7–8, E72)

Blake evokes the chilling threat of predestination (cf. Nuttall 1998: 91–4), linked with political conformity dreamt up by an all-powerful being who is in reality nothing other than a human construct (‘Human Abstract’, E27). Knowledge of what love and compassion mean is not related to the ‘minute particulars’ of life but to a theoretical framework, dreamt up by a single mind, abstracted from the world of flesh and blood. Such abstractedness, which Blake here represents at the divine level, is depicted in human terms in the brilliant depiction of Newton (Tate Gallery, London, B306), who sits, apparently at the bottom of the sea, unaware of his surroundings and only concerned with that which emerges from his brilliant mind, as he uses his compasses to design his triangular shape (a reference here to the doctrine of the Trinity?). Newton’s constricted perception is what Blake terms ‘Single Vision & Newton’s sleep’ (Letter to Butts, 22 Nov 1802, E722). As a result of the influence of Newton (and Bacon and Locke) ‘man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern’ (MHH14, E39). Blake, unlike Newton, was not interested in seeing the data of nature, or, for that matter, of the Holy Bible as providing sense data for the human mind to explain, whether that be creation or apocalyptic texts like Daniel and Revelation (Burdon 1997). In the case of both nature and the Bible, Blake believed that both were gateways to eternity, triggers for the imagination to explore both the inner life and different perspectives on the cosmos and the arrangements which humans have established to live in it. The reduction to a philosophy based on the five senses is the subject of criticism in one of Blake’s earliest works, There is No Natural Religion. For example, we find a similar figure to Newton along with the words ‘He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God. He who sees the Ratio sees himself only’ (There is No Natural Religion, Series b Application, E3). If the Job engravings show us Blake at the end his life interpreting the whole of a biblical book and in so doing exhibiting the interpretative concerns which

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characterised his work in the 1790s, the two works from that period which in their different ways show Blake’s problem with orthodox interpretation of the Bible and the remedy needed for its understanding are The First Book of Urizen and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Urizen is a direct attack on the biblical Genesis and its dominant position as a determinant of social values in a Christian society. Blake’s Urizen is not the benevolent patriarch of Genesis, but a demiurge seeking to impose order on the world. The God of Genesis dislikes confusion and brooks no possibility that humans might be like gods (cf. Gen 3). Blake engages with Genesis because it laid the foundation for considering the whole Bible to be a codebook to distinguish good from evil, and the sacred from the profane, and it was a key text in modelling divine monarchy which was emulated by kings and priests on earth, a system that Blake despised (Europe 11, E64). In The First Book of Urizen Urizen comes across as a pathetic figure, eliciting sympathy and pity. But ‘pity’ by itself is inadequate (‘Pity would be no more, If we did not make somebody Poor’, ‘The Human Abstract’, E27). The irony is that Blake depicts Los, his prophetic hero, as the one who restricts ‘the formless unmeasurable death’ that confronts him in the person of Urizen (The First Book of Urizen, 3:14, E74). The ‘Poor pale pitiable form’ (‘My Spectre’, E477) whose baleful influence spreads inexorably compels Los to curtail it. Suppression of a contrary, Blake writes later, is counter-productive ( J10:7–17, E152–3). BLAKE

AND

ENOCH:

THE SKETCHES OF THE

ENOCH APOCALYPSE

The Book of Enoch is an unsystematic miscellany of seemingly unrelated material, a visionary work full of angels and a story of human sinfulness which is in part at odds with the Book of Genesis. It has long fascinated biblical scholars because of its similarities with certain aspects of the New Testament, particularly the use of the phrase ‘the Son of Man’, which Jesus uses to describe himself in the canonical gospels. It is quoted as prophecy in the Epistle of Jude ( Jude 14, quoting 1 Enoch 1:9). In the Christian tradition there is occasional interest in Enoch (VanderKam 1996). It is likely that 1 Enoch has influenced Matthew 25:31–45. In 1 Peter 3:19–20 Christ’s proclamation to the spirits in prison may reflect Enoch’s proclamation of judgement to the Watchers who had been imprisoned and sought Enoch’s intercession (1 Enoch 12:1-7). The importance of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch for the New Testament is impossible to overestimate (Knibb 1984: 169-82; on the importance of this book in the context of beliefs about the future of the world, see Weiss 1971 and Schweitzer 1903).

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In 1821, towards the end of Blake’s life, a former Oxford Regius Professor of Hebrew, Richard Laurence, Archbishop of Cashel, published a translation from the Ethiopic of the book we now know as 1 Enoch. The book had been brought back from Ethiopia in 1773, and one of the copies had been deposited in the Bodleian Libary in Oxford. The book is based on a brief reference in Genesis 5:24 (‘And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him’), which was understood by later interpreters as indicating that Enoch was taken up to heaven (like Elijah in 2 Kings 2:11), where he witnessed divine mysteries and became an intermediary between God and the angelic and human world. The enigmatic reference to Enoch in Genesis 5:24 generated a welter of speculation about his person and a range of literature attributed to him. The legend of Enoch’s righteousness, his position in heaven, and his wisdom, provided opportunities for displaying a vast array of information in the apocalyptic mode concerning astronomy, eschatology and exhortation. Enoch is located in a privileged position (1 Enoch 12), which allows him access to God, with whom he intercedes on behalf of the Watchers, the fallen angels of Genesis 6:1–4. For this purpose Enoch ascends to heaven and, in a description reminiscent of the visions of Ezekiel and Isaiah and a prototype of later visions of God in apocalyptic literature and in the Jewish apocalyptic and mystical tradition, he ascends through the palaces of heaven to receive a message of judgement from God on the Watchers (1 Enoch l4:8–25). Elsewhere, in Ecclesiasticus, from the Apocrypha, at 44:16, Enoch heads the list of famous men, the text claiming for him that he ‘pleased the Lord, and was translated, being an example of repentance to all generations’. At Ecclesiasticus 49:14 his translation to heaven is again noted, preceding great men like Joseph, Shem and Seth. He is said to have been unique (‘none was created like him’), which is proved by his translation from the earth (cf. 2 Kings 2:11). In the Wisdom of Solomon 4:10 (also in the Christian Apocrypha) Enoch (who is not explicitly named) is seen as the example of the righteous man whose death is mistaken as divine judgement but in whom, in reality, the wisdom and righteousness of age reached fruition in youth. Here he is said to have been ‘snatched away’, with a verb used in the New Testament as a term for the ‘rapture’ to heaven (it is the same verb used in 2 Cor 12:2–4; 1 Thess 4:17; Rev 12:5). In later apocalypses attributed to Enoch, such as the Slavonic Apocalypse of Enoch (Charlesworth 1983: 91–22; Orlov 2005), he ascends through the seven heavens, on a journey in which the component parts of the heavenly world and their inhabitants are briefly described. In the Hebrew Book of Enoch, also known as 3 Enoch, a solitary example of the extravagant Enochic speculation is preserved

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in the Jewish tradition (10–16, Charlesworth 1983). Enoch is transformed into the angel Metatron – an event with a parallel in 1 Enoch 71 (Chapter 70 in Laurence’s translation), where Enoch seems to become the heavenly Son of Man referred to earlier in the book. The transformation of Enoch into an exalted angel with a throne like that of God is the high-water mark of the Enoch legend (Morray-Jones and Rowland 2009: 33–62; Bowker 1969: 142–50). The basis of the Book of Enoch’s legend of the sexual liaison of the Sons of God and women lies in the passing reference in Genesis 6, which has led some to suppose that the brief Genesis reference may have been dependent on the kind of extended myth we find in the Book of Enoch (Barker 1987): And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. (Genesis 6:2–7)

Most commentators assume that Enoch is dependent on Genesis because the Greek of Enoch glosses Genesis’s ‘the sons of god’ as angels in 1 Enoch 7(6:2) and also because of the implied reference to Genesis 3 in 1 Enoch 32:6 (31:5 in Laurence’s translation). The Book of Enoch opens with a statement of the inevitability of divine judgement. Enoch describes himself as a righteous man whose eyes were opened by the Lord when he saw a holy vision in the heavens (1 Enoch 1:1). The theophany makes the humans and angels (called the Watchers) fear and tremble and brings about dissolution of this world. The upheaval is reminiscent of the effects of the chaos brought to the universe by the revelation of the saving act of the Lamb who was slain in Rev. 6:16. It is from 1 Enoch 2(1:9) that the Epistle of Jude 14 quotes, and in Jude 4 and 6 there are allusions to 1 Enoch 48:10; 12:4; 10:6.

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The general condemnation at the opening of the book is given a more specific content in 1 Enoch 7–10, with the myth of the fallen angels, the sons of heaven, which is an extended version of the allusive reference in Genesis 6:4: It happened after the sons of men had multiplied in those days, that daughters were born to them, elegant and beautiful. And when the angels, the sons of heaven, beheld them, they became enamoured of them, saying to each other, Come let us select for ourselves wives from the progeny of men, and let us beget children. Then their leader Samyaza said to them; I fear that you may perhaps be indisposed to the performance of this enterprise; and that I alone shall suffer for so grievous a crime. But they answered him, and said; we all swear; and bind ourselves by mutual execrations, that we will not change our intention, but execute our projected undertaking. Then they swore all together, and all bound themselves by mutual execrations. Their whole number was two hundred, who descended upon Ardis, which is the top of mount Armon. . . . Then they took wives, each choosing for himself; whom they began to approach, and with whom they cohabited; teaching them sorcery, incantations, and the dividing of roots and trees. And the women conceiving brought forth giants, whose stature was each three hundred cubits. These devoured all which the labour of men produced; until it became impossible to feed them; when they turned themselves against men, in order to devour them; and began to injure birds, beasts, reptiles, and fishes, to eat their flesh one after another, and to drink their blood. Then the earth reproved the unrighteous. (1 Enoch 7: 1–7; 10–15, translation from Laurence 1995)

In the face of the destruction humans cry out and their voices reach heaven. Michael and Gabriel look down from heaven and see the blood shed on the earth and bring the plight of humankind before the Most High (1 Enoch 9). God’s response is to warn that the whole earth will be destroyed by a deluge, before the restoration of the earth which the Watchers have ruined (1 Enoch 10:4). Enoch then appears as a mediator between angels and humans, with access to divine secrets which enable him to have an authentic perspective on the world and God’s purposes for it (12:1). Like God he discloses both ‘past and future and lays bare the traces of secret things’ (Ecclesiasticus 42:19). He is the righteous scribe who mediates between God and the Watchers (12:4). The latter seek Enoch’s assistance in seeking God’s forgiveness. After an ascent to heaven to intercede with God (14:8–25) and to receive the divine message of condemnation (16:5), Enoch travels through the universe, observing those secret places removed from normal experience (17–35). When Enoch eventually reaches Paradise he sees there ‘the

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tree of knowledge’ (31:3 Laurence translation). When ‘your ancient father and your aged mother’ ate from it, they obtained ‘knowledge; their eyes being opened, and they knowing themselves to be naked, were expelled from the garden’ (31:5, Laurence translation, 1 Enoch 32:6 in modern translations). THE ENOCH

DRAWINGS

It comes as no surprise that Blake, like his non-conformist spiritual ancestors, who had gravitated to the apocryphal 2 Esdras (Hamilton 1999), was attracted by the Book of Enoch (Bentley 1978). In his Marriage of Heaven and Hell (16, E40), Blake wrote of the giant antediluvians chained to the earth ‘who are our energies’. Blake returned to the figure of Enoch throughout his working life, from the ‘Job-like’ depictions of Enoch in a watercolour of c. 1780–5 (B146, plate 181) and the lithograph of 1807 (Keynes 1956: XV1; Bindman 1970: 73; Paley 2003: 269) to the late drawings. In the 1807 lithograph we have a scene reminiscent of the opening of the Job series, with the patriarch surrounded by humans and angels. Enoch is presented as presiding over the arts. In the open book on Enoch’s lap there appears just one word, Enoch, written in Hebrew. There are also two figures on the right of the picture examining a writing which contains words from Gen 5:24 (again in Hebrew, ‘and he was not, for God took him’). Enoch’s patronage of the arts is seen in the presence of figures playing a lute, painting, writing or carrying a scroll. This humanistic trait seems to reflect sentiments to be found in another text, the Book of Jubilees, which, like the Book of Enoch, was popular among the community which left behind the Dead Sea Scrolls. Here the brief reference to Enoch depicts him as the divinely appointed scribe ( Jubilees 4:20–4). In ‘Epitome of James Hervey’s “Meditations among the Tombs” ’ (1820; Tate Gallery, London, E770), Enoch has a prominent place, like the Almighty, with a scroll in his hand, suggesting his role as heavenly scribe (1 Enoch 12:4). Evidence of possible influence of the Enochic material elsewhere in the Blake corpus may be noted in the reference to ‘the Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence’ (MHH 16; E40) and in Jerusalem ( J42:74; 77:12, E190 and E232), though a link with Daniel is also possible (Dan 4:13, 17, 23). In the Book of Enoch Blake found what seemed to be an ancient prophecy (cf Jude 14: ‘And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him’, 1 Enoch 1:9; 1

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Enoch 2 in Laurence’s translation). The book expressed his own ideas, so it is no wonder that Blake began to illustrate it with such enthusiasm; it was ‘deep calling to deep, vision answering to vision’ (Bentley 2001: 429). At his death in 1827 Blake left incomplete illustrations for this book (1824–7; National Gallery of Art, Washington, B827; Brown 1940; Paley 2003: 266–79, and on earlier interest in the Book of Enoch, Hessayon and Keene 2006: 5–40). These remarkable drawings lose nothing for being sketches. They were done on paper with a watermark of 1796, but are believed to have originated at the end of Blake’s life when he was working on the Job engravings and the Genesis, Bunyan and Dante illustrations (the last also sketched on paper with the 1796 watermark).2 The numbering in pencil on the sketches themselves is the order in which they are considered below, though Butlin doubts if the numbers are in Blake’s hand (B827) and treats the five images in a different order. He starts with the sketch of the angels appearing with rays of light with phallic attributes suggested by 1 Enoch 87:5 (in Laurence’s translation, 88:3 in modern translations, B827 1). The second in his sequence is the seduction by a descending figure flanked by two gigantic figures (B827 2). The third seems to pick up on the Greek of 1 Enoch 19:2 and the reference there to the siren (B827 3). The fourth is Enoch’s appearance before God after his ascent to heaven described in 1 Enoch 14:8–25 (B827 40). The final image is identified by Butlin as the Lord of the Spirits surrounded by archangel attendants (B827 5, 1 Enoch 40:1–8, further Paley 2003; B827; Brown 1940; Bentley 1978: 229–35). As one reads the designs, however, the pencilled sequence more closely follows Laurence’s text of the Book of Enoch. The sketch (5.1) with the handwritten caption (not shown) ‘Book of Enoch’ (National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1944.14.9, B827 5) has a central figure who is clearly male (the genitalia are very noticeable; Bentley 1978: 231). His head tilts rightwards, and his hair is horn-like (somewhat similar to the hair of the angels in ‘The Morning Stars’, Engraving 14 of the Job sequence, B550 14, and similar to the shadowy figure’s head in B827 4). On either side are other figures, (probably four in all) with hands raised to form a canopy-like arch above the main figure’s head. As we have seen, it has been suggested that this sketch may have been inspired by 1 Enoch 40:1–9, where the Lord of the Spirits is surrounded by four attendants: Michael, Raphael, Gabriel and Phanuel. These four archangels may be stationed near each of the Living Creatures (h.ayyoth), Blake’s Four Zoas (1 Enoch 40:4–7). Below the feet of the male figure are two female figures arranged in a semicircular swirl, which may be the h.ayyoth. It resembles the swirl of ‘Ezekiel’s Wheels’ (B468), ‘God blessing the Seventh Day’ (1803; private collection, B434) and the angelic host in the ‘Annunciation to the

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5.1 The Daughters of Men welcome an Angel.

Shepherds’ (1809; Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, B538 2). Another passage to consider is 1 Enoch 1:9 (Chapter 2 in Laurence’s translation, the verse quoted in Jude 14), in which it is likely that Jude has understood ‘Lord’ to refer to Christ. The horn-like hair of the central figure could be an attempt to link 1 Enoch 1:9 with Revelation 1:14 (cf. 1 Enoch 46:1), the Son of Man has ‘head

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and . . . hairs . . . white like wool, as white as snow’, like the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7:9. Bentley (1978: 231), however, correctly and decisively points out that all the attendant figures are depicted as female in form, with breasts, and that the picture should be more appropriately seen as a Watcher surrounded by four women. As such, rather than the divinity attended by angels it is more likely to be one of the ‘sons of God’ being ‘saluted’ by the daughters of men. This echoes the words in 1 Enoch 19:2 (‘[the women] ‘who led astray the angels of heaven that they might salute them’). This is plausible, given the depiction of the attendant figures, and would make sense as the first in the series. The canopy-shape over the figure, similar to that over the Great Glory later in the sequence, may suggest a deliberate contrast, in which the angelic attendants appropriately salute God, whereas the female figures give honour to one of the sons of God which should have been reserved for God alone.3 The sketch on which there is a pencilled 2 (B827 2) is entitled by Butlin ‘An angel teaching a Daughter of Men the Secrets of Sin’. It depicts an angel descending (with no halo), head down, with his left hand hovering over the genital area of the woman. The woman’s head is turned slightly away. The left hand of the woman is around the angel’s arm and her right hand is placed on the inside of her thigh. On either side are what appear to be two large faces watching, with indistinct body shape. They could be other demons (Paley thinks they are the offspring of the union between the women and the angels, the Giants, 2003: 273), but they could be archangels watching the sin taking place. Intertwined with the figures are flowers. These could be a reference to the dividing of roots which is mentioned as one of the secrets shared by the angels (1 Enoch 7:10: ‘then they took wives, each choosing for himself; whom they began to approach, and with whom they cohabited; teaching them sorcery, incantations, and the dividing of roots and trees’). The descending figure is reminiscent of other Blake images, for example, the descending figure in the pencil sketch of the Four Zoas, which is widely interpreted as a depiction of the supporting arms of the Eternal Saviour (conclusion of The First Night, Four Zoas 1:466, E310; Bentley 1963: Plate 18). There is a pencilled 3 (B827 1) on the third sketch, which is inscribed ‘from the Book of Enoch’, and is in many ways the most complete of the set. It too seems to depict 1 Enoch 7:1–3, 10 (B827 1). The two figures have halos and there are beams of light coming from the centre of their bodies. In the very middle of this halo of light, with massive beams projecting forth, there appears to be a worm and a drop of liquid coming out of it. There appear to be lines, like streams of fire, between the left of the woman and the angel. The vulva is shown

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5.2 An angel teaching a Daughter of Men the Secrets of Sin.

without any pubic hair. The woman’s left hand is pointing to the sky and her right hand pointing downwards, in a line continuous with the direction of the other hand. It is compared by Paley to the Dante Illustration ‘The Queen of Heaven in Glory’ (B 812 99, Paley 2003: 273). What is striking here is the shock

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5.3 The Descent of the Angels to one of the Daughters of Men.

on the woman’s face and the overwhelming impact of the male angels (sons of God) that are causing the problem. It is as if she cannot fully comprehend them whilst being uncomfortably aware of their presence. The reality of this awesome appearance is apparent on the woman’s face, something that is true of both of

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the first two Watchers pictures. In one of them there is clearly alarm, in the other an aversion to what is happening, perhaps even a sense of helplessness at the assault. The ‘worm like’ shapes, reminiscent of the serpent, and the tree could suggest a retelling of the Genesis temptation story. In the next sketch there is a pencilled 4 and this drawing is headed B of Enoch (perhaps a reference to 1 Enoch 19:2, B 827 3). In the centre there appears to be a tree trunk flanked by two female figures and at the bottom the outlines of a recumbent body (reminiscent of the body in ‘A Poison Tree’, E28). The female figure on the right has hands above her head. The position of the arms of the woman on the left is like that of the woman in drawing 3, with her right arm pointing to heaven and the left in a continuous line downwards. The face of the woman on the left seems more content, in contrast to the shock manifest on the face of the female figure in the second sketch. There is evidence of scales on the bosom and lower torso and loins. It has been suggested that one of the women has turned into a siren (Paley 2003: 274). Indeed, in 1 Enoch 19:1–3, in the Greek version (the Akhmim Manuscript, Codex Panopolitanus, Nickelsburg 2001: 12) reference is made to the women corrupted by the angels becoming sirens (‘And the women also of the angels who went astray shall become sirens’) In later mythology the mermaid and the siren, both of whom lured sailors to their destruction, were linked and this may explain the pencilled title on the drawing ‘The Daughter of Man becoming a Siren’ (the female form in J75 caressing the head of the dragon, probably Babylon and many-headed beast, also has what appear to be scales around the genital area. Paley points to a poem in the Notebook which refers to a ‘A Woman Scaly’, E517, Paley 2003: 274). On the title page of one version of Blake’s Illustrations to the Book of Genesis (1826–7; B828 2, roughly contemporary with the Enoch sketches) there are four figures at the bottom of the page, probably to be identified with Ezekiel’s ‘living creatures’ (ox, eagle, lion and man). The human figure, however, has a scaly appearance, similar to that of the female figure in the Enoch drawing. The reference to the ‘sirens’ is dependent on the Greek version discovered at the end of the nineteenth century (it is absent from the Greek preserved by George Syncellus in the ninth century CE, Nickelsburg 2001: 277). It is, therefore, lacking in the Grabe translation as well as, obviously, the Laurence translation of the Ethiopic. Laurence’s translation of 19:2 has ‘and their wives also shall be judged, who led astray the angels of heaven that they might salute them’. How Blake could seemingly have anticipated the version we find in the Akhmim Greek version in his sketch is a mystery. Perhaps what is required is a new

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5.4 The Daughter of Men becomes a Siren.

description of the subject-matter of the sketch. The clearest images are of the two female figures, one looking happier than her counterpart in the drawing 3. At the bottom of the sketch there seems to be the outline of a supine body and a tree in the centre. One possible construal of this picture is that in general terms it depicts the effects of the seduction of the women by the angels, and the disorder, which the author of 1 Enoch believes is produced in both the human

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person and in society: women using ‘paint’ (1 Enoch 8:1) and ‘the quantity of blood shed on the earth’ (1 Enoch 9:1, Laurence’s translation). As we have seen, the character of the skin resembles the figure in the second frontispiece of the Illustrations of Genesis (1826–7; Huntington Library, B828 2). In J75, as already noted, there is a female form with scales around her genital area, caressing the head of the dragon. This is probably Rahab who ‘is reveald Mystery Babylon the Great: the Abomination of Desolation Religion hid in War: a Dragon red, & hidden Harlot’ ( J75:18–20, E231), and opponent of Jerusalem ( J75:1, E230). The similar use of the image of ‘A Woman Scaly’ (E517, Paley 2003: 274) connects Rahab Babylon (see below, p. 149) with a woman who is victim of the seduction by the angels in the Enoch myth. In both Revelation 17 and the early chapters of 1 Enoch the social and ecological effects of the liaison, in the Enoch myth between the angels and the women, and in Revelation between Babylon and the kings of the earth, are very much to the fore. In the image on J75 we see the way in which Rahab Babylon begins to resemble the characteristics of the many-headed beast with which she has consorted. The last sketch in the Enoch series is of Enoch before the Great Glory (1 Enoch 14:14–25, B827 4). There is a pencilled 5 on it. It is lightly sketched and seems to be in a less complete form than others in the series. The simple canopy formed at the top of the picture, reminiscent of the ‘Four and Twenty Elders’ (Tate Gallery, London, B515; cf. ‘Noah and the Rainbow’, B437) bears some resemblance to the framework of the opening and closing engravings in the Job sequence and the sketch of God the Father giving directions to the Son (Paradise Lost, x.55–84; Erdman and Moore 1977: N110). The angels forming a canopy over the central figure resemble other Blake images, especially ‘Mercy and Truth are Met Together’ (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, B463), and ‘Christ girding himself with strength’ (1805; Tate Gallery, London, B464). The central figure, with peaks of flaming horn-like hair coming out of his head, seems to be seated and looking downward. There is a halo around his head with steps leading up to him, and heads to the left of that of the enthroned one. There are two standing figures on either side of the central figure, and wavy lines on either side of the scene, especially on the right as the viewer looks, which could be a representation of the streams of fire (cf. Dan 7:9–10 and 1 Enoch 14:19). There is another probable sketch in the Enoch series (Fogg Art Museum. Harvard, B812 11 verso; the word ‘ENOCH’ is pencilled on the page). It is described by Butlin as ‘A Soaring Figure amid Stars’. Butlin follows Bentley in

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5.5 Enoch before the Great Glory.

regarding the figure as ‘one of the fallen angels punished by being tethered to earth while he aspires to the stars’ (Bentley 1988: 234). Paley considers that no one passage in the Book of Enoch combines the different elements of this image, a figure with arms upraised, feet bound together, with four stars grouped

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together and another a huge star. He suggests 1 Enoch 18:14–16; 81:9 and 11; 85:2; 87:5, and wonders whether it may be Enoch himself aspiring to the heavens with the sketch suggesting the limitations of his vision (Paley 2003: 278). Of the passages mentioned, the one most obviously related to this sketch is 1 Enoch 87 in which Enoch describes the fall of one of the ‘angelic’ stars (probably linked with the Sons of God, thrown into the abyss): Then I looked at that one of the four white men, who came forth first. He seized the first star which fell down from heaven. And, binding it hand and foot, he cast it into a valley; a valley narrow, deep, stupendous, and gloomy. Then one of them drew his sword, and gave it to the elephants, camels, and asses, who began to strike each other. And the whole earth shook on account of them. And when I looked in the vision, behold, one of those four angels, who came forth, hurled from heaven, collected together, and took all the great stars, whose form partly resembles that of horses; and binding them all hand and foot, cast them into the cavities of the earth. (1 Enoch 87:1–7 in Laurence’s translation; 88:1-3 in modern translations)

Blake, who knew his Bible well, would have probably recognised that 1 Peter 3:19 describes Jesus proclaiming to the spirits (presumably) a message of redemption (which Enoch was not allowed to do, 1 Enoch 16:4–5). This would be at one with Blake’s view that even Satan has the possibility of redemption (a sentiment articulated in The Ghost of Abel, 2:20, E272). The Enoch myth, at least as interpreted by Blake, draws attention to the violence of male supernatural figures against women at the very foundation of human history. Violence is at the heart of the fundamental dislocation in the universe, and, in the case of the Enochic apocalypse, it is violence done by men (albeit divine men, ‘the sons of god’) to women. This is brought out graphically in the third sketch of the sequence, where the exaggeratedly large male sexual organs place these overbearing figures as a terrible threat to the defenceless women who are at their mercy. What we find in the allusive Enoch sketches is a depiction of the destructive power of the male in relation to the female. This exercise of male, supernatural, power creates an ideology of religious taboos in which women are seen as the problem. All of this is the consequence of a primal act of abusive power. The ‘daughters of men’ are deceived into thinking that they are confronted by a serpent or a star, but in fact what is happening is that women are being ensnared into relationships with men.4

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In Blake’s Enoch sequence we find the conventional ideology in which sexual desire through the woman is the basic sin being questioned. It is the male angelic powers which abuse the women, and as a result corrupt the women by their abuse and bring about the repetition of the original violence. The abused women replicate that abuse in their relationships with men and this incorporation into a pattern of behaviour goes on serving the interests of men. Hence the woman now becomes a scaly siren and continues that original experience of abuse in relating to men thereafter. Here is the crucial original sin, rooted in violence and in abuse done by men to women. The first sketch suggests human hospitality which is then profaned. The last in the sequence has the divine in the midst of other figures, on the same level, and, although differentiated by the distinctive hair, there is no sense that there is anything other than community and participation rather than hierarchy. The Blake work which bears more than a superficial resemblance to the legend of the rape of the women by the sons of God is The Visions of the Daughters of Albion (dating among Blake’s early illuminated works, from the same time as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in 1793, Bruder 1997 and 2007). Indeed, in some ways one may see this extraordinary meditation on male sexuality, female response, and the self-discovery that emerges through the experience of rape and rejection as parallel to the interpretation of the Enoch legend and its effects on the female victims which we find in the late Enoch sketches. In it we have an account of Bromion’s rape of Oothoon (Visions, 2:2, E46). The act of violence is an experience which generates insight for Oothoon about the repressive tyrannous religion of the false god, Urizen, and the different ways the two men with whom she had to deal are in thrall to its abstractions and oppression. The rape elicits no compassion from the self-centred Theotormon to whom Oothoon is betrothed, for he is so caught up with the mores of sexual ethics that he cannot come to terms with a relationship with the ‘defiled’ Oothoon. The two men, Bromion and Theotormon, typify two aspects of the male character, one oppressive, the other conformist and narrow-minded. The two in Blake’s poem are two sides of the problem posed by a male-dominated world in which the primal male experience of a male child with its mother colours so much of the patriarchal religion, society and culture with which women (and indeed men) have to deal. The Enoch legend leaves the raped women silent about the terrible abuse done to them, without any response to the violence done to them. They are victims who, like Oothoon, find themselves pregnant with the progeny of the angels. In Oothoon’s lament, however, Blake enables an abused woman to find

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a voice and through the terror of rape to discern, and lament, the effects of being indoctrinated into a religion of modesty in the conventions she receives. The received wisdom, endorsed by the ‘mistaken demon of heaven’ (5:3, E48), can only be criticised by human experience. Recourse to the laws of sacred scripture is no adequate resource to chart the exploration of desire. For all her insight Oothoon never frees herself from seeing herself and her identity being fulfilled by a man. In Job Blake saw one who moved from habit and memory to the immediacy of vision, whereas Enoch represented the quintessential intermediary between the world of the material and the spiritual. At the beginning of Blake’s last prophetic book, Jerusalem, stands a picture of a young man holding what appears to be a disk of the sun in his hand as he goes through an open door into the darkness. Like Enoch, summoned by the mists and the clouds in 1 Enoch 14:8, Blake, the explorer of the visionary imagination, spent his life seeking to enable those who dwelt in darkness to see the light through the imaginative exercises in epistemological transformation which are involved in engaging with his illuminated books. It is fitting that Blake is one of the earliest commentators on the Book of Enoch, a book whose importance he grasped and whose import he succeeded in communicating. *** The material in this chapter should not occasion surprise. The Bible, for all its brilliance as a source of inspiration, is one of those ‘classic texts’ which ‘rouze the faculties to act’, yet it also needs a radical critique. Blake used a powerful critical device in the The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by assuming that the Devil had all the best tunes. Thereby the priggish and narrow-minded views of the angels were subject to criticism. The book’s message is unequivocal: ‘everything that lives is Holy’ (MHH27, E45, and on the background Makdisi 2003: 245–50), and the ‘sacred codes’, which promote the separation of the sacred and profane, are contrary to human flourishing. Blake expressed his dissatisfaction with Genesis in The First Book of Urizen by rewriting it, and he resorts to an alternative account of evil in the world in the Enoch drawings. Here the foundation myth of the Bible, which explains sin as refusal to obey the divine monarch, is challenged, and an alternative myth espoused, which sees the ‘original sin’ in male violence and the terrible effects it has brought about. None of these texts, strictly speaking, is an interpretation of the Bible, though Urizen is a parody of one of its books, and the Enoch sketches are based on a non-canonical text. To

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have copied the Bible too slavishly or to have written commentaries on it might have meant exalting the Bible to a position Blake did not want to give it by expounding the wisdom locked in the authoritative book. Blake believed he shared the ‘Poetic Genius’ of those who first wrote it, his own texts serving to correct the Bible and lay bare its underlying message. One who has the ‘spirit of prophecy’ can know as well as the biblical writers themselves, for to quote Jacob Boehme’s words: ‘the Spirit of Christ in his children is not bound to any certain form’ (Mysterium Magnum 28:52). The primary cosmogonic text of the Bible is subject to criticism. In Urizen Blake describes the emergence of a religion maintained by unquestioning, unimaginative priests, based on the kind of adherence to received wisdom which is exemplified by their divine model, Urizen. In the Enoch sketches the violence done by the lustful angels to women, just like the violence done by Cain to Abel, manifests the triumph of individualism over community. But in The Ghost of Abel it is the refusal of vengeance to Abel and his advocate Satan that opens up the possibility of another way of being (below, p. 208). For Blake, Genesis 3 and its ethic of ‘thou shalt not’ only ‘binds with briars’. It opposes rather than opens a way for human integration. In fact the actual ‘Fall’ opens the eyes of the humans as they eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and so become aware of the world of sexuality and mortality, even if they can never fully comprehend it this side of death.

6

‘Would to God that all the Lords people were prophets’ And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen! And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills? Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold! Bring me my Chariot of fire! I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land. Would to God that all the Lords people were Prophets. Numbers xi. 29v1

In these famous stanzas from his Preface to Milton (extant in Copies A and B, E95–6) Blake summons people to be prophets, not expecting them thereby to predict the future but rather to engage in mental struggle to discern the inadequacies of the present and conceive the way to a more hopeful future. The poem is simple in its structure. The first two stanzas set out the problem by asking a series

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of questions which demand the answer ‘no’. This way of construing these lines thus rests heavily on the question marks at the end of lines 2 and 4 of stanza 2. The third stanza is an invocation and identification of the struggle that is needed to challenge and change the status quo. The final stanza harks back to the millennial vision of the coming of God’s Kingdom on earth, which is such a central theme of biblical, prophetic religion. The New Jerusalem is not something remote or far off but a present possibility, something which may be built in ‘England’s green and pleasant land’. Thus, there is no disjunction between human activity and divine activity; nothing here about ‘leaving it all to God’, because God indwells men and women who are capable through the imaginative and creative work of the artist to shed light on the present. The invocation of Elijah’s chariot is not an exercise in nostalgia, but refers to the never-ending task of ‘every honest man’ who may prophesy and, like Elijah of old, condemn the idolatry and injustice of the modern analogues to Ahab and Jezebel. The spirit and power of Elijah (Luke 1:17) were ever available for those who would exercise their imagination and contemplative thought. So prophecy is not just a thing of the past. It is the vocation of all people. The vision of the New Jerusalem is one that is open to all and the task of building belongs to all. ‘Would to God that all the Lords people were Prophets’, Blake ends the Preface. Prophecy is key to his work. Not only did he, like his biblical forebears, write prophecies to the nations, but also his language and visionary experience is permeated with biblical prophecy. The struggle of the prophet, so graphically portrayed in Jeremiah’s anguish, is captured in the spiritual and mental effort, the ‘mental fight’ in which the prophet has to engage. In Blake’s work the hero is Los, ‘the Spirit of Prophecy’ ( J39:31, E187), who inspires Blake (M22:4–5, E116; 36:21, E137). Los is closely linked with Blake’s great prophetic task: ‘To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes/Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity/Ever expanding in the Bosom of God. the Human Imagination’ ( J5:18, E147). Blake likens Los’s work, in word and image, to that of a blacksmith, who forges and remakes. The sense of struggle is part of Blake’s imagination (cf. J78:10, E233). In this chapter we consider Blake’s relationship to the prophets, both historical and contemporary, and ponder the relationship between his own experience and theirs (cf. Hobbs 1997). We shall attempt to understand Blake’s distinctive approach to prophecy by setting him in the context of examples of the prophetic enthusiasm of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England (Mee 1992). Just as John of Patmos sat on the shoulders of Ezekiel (to borrow an image from the south transept window in Chartres cathedral), so Blake sat on

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the shoulders of both Ezekiel and John of Patmos. So, a central theme is the merkabah symbolism which particularly illuminates the way in which Blake characteristically adapts the biblical text to provide the vehicle for his discernment of ‘eternity . . . in love with the productions of time’ (MHH7, E36), or, as Jacob Boehme wrote about the activity of the prophet, ‘every prophet is a limit, wherein a time is included or an age comprehended’ (Mysterium Magnum 67:9, quoted in Fischer 2004: 51). In the final section of the chapter we shall see how his distinctive contribution was brilliantly to encapsulate an aspect of biblical prophecy in his focus on the ‘minute particulars’ of contemporary life. Nowhere is this better seen than in ‘London’ (Songs of Experience, E26–7), but it is also apparent in the less obviously Bible-related, but no less prophetic, ‘Holy Thursday’ poems (from both Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, E13 and 19–20), with their echoes of apocalyptic themes. BLAKE

AMONG THE PROPHETS: HIS CONTEMPORARIES

Joanna Southcott (1750–1814) and Richard Brothers (1757–1824) were Blake’s exact contemporaries, and Blake wrote a quatrain about Southcott, which is as enigmatic as anything he wrote and which evinces sympathy more than criticism: Whateer is done to her she cannot know And if youll ask her she will swear it so Whether tis good or evil none’s to blame No one can take the pride no one the shame (‘On the Virginity of the Virgin Mary & Johanna Southcott’, E501)

Southcott, Brothers, and Blake all prophesied at a critical moment in British history (Mee 1992): a time of war and political upheaval (Southcott died the year before the battle of Waterloo; on prophecy in this context Juster 2003; Hopkins 1982). As the 1790s progressed, dissent was quashed as the social upheaval brought about by the French Revolution – at least initially a promise to many – threatened those in power. Many erstwhile sympathisers began to despair at what happened in France. Blake too became ambivalent about the energy released by revolution, as the ending of his prophecy Europe suggests. Joanna Southcott was born near Ottery St Mary, in Devon, England. She was the daughter of a tenant farmer and had little formal education. In 1792 she claimed to have heard the Spirit of God, warning her that the coming of Christ was imminent. She then prophesied about meteorological and other local events

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and attracted interest in the Exeter region. From the start of her prophetic ministry until her death she claimed to be the ‘Woman clothed with the Sun’ of Revelation 12:1 and the Bride of Christ (Rev 19:7). Indeed, Southcott believed she was called to fulfil the role of the Woman Clothed with the Sun (Revelation 12) and would be the one whose seed was ‘to bruise the serpent’ (Genesis 3:15). Southcott’s theology was based on her interpretation of the Fall. The woman had told the truth – that Satan had beguiled her – but the man had wrongly blamed her, and ultimately God, for giving her to him. God’s purposes in redemption were to be fulfilled in the advent of a second Eve who would complement the salvation begun by Christ. Since there was still evil in the world, she believed that the promise made in Eden concerning the crushing of the serpent’s head had not yet been fulfilled, though the bruising of the heel of the seed of the woman was fulfilled in the death of Christ (Gen 3:15). The crushing of the serpent’s head had to happen through the intercession of Joanna Southcott, the ‘Second Eve’, supported by those followers who would sign her petition to God to bring about the downfall of Satan. A decisive experience for Southcott took place in 1794 as she was reflecting on Revelation 21: I was reading one Sunday, in the Bible, 21st chapter of Revelation, Come hither, and I will show thee the Bride, the Lamb’s Wife. And he carried me away in the spirit unto a great high mountain, where I saw the New Jerusalem descending out of heaven. Hearing this [sic] words, I blushed, though alone by myself . . . I went up and was earnest in prayer, and was answered, ‘Thou wast in the spirit, when thou sawest the New Jerusalem descending, with all the host of heaven; and thou wast on a high mountain, where John saw the Spirit. The Spirit is the Spirit of God that hath visited thee.’ (Southcott 1801: 48)

Here Southcott believed herself to be called to identify with John’s experience of coming up to heaven and seeing the New Jerusalem descending. Like Joachim of Fiore before her (McGinn 1985:21), Southcott distinguished between scripture and her prophetic or inspired interpretative role. While she affirmed that all truth was contained in scripture, she believed that all had not been made clear, awaiting the right time. In this she based herself on biblical precedents like Daniel 12:9: ‘for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end’. She believed that Christ came as the Paraclete in her, so that her prophecy could clarify the meaning of scripture.

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In 1797 Southcott had an argument with her sister about the transparency of the Bible. The Spirit had told her that the Bible was full of mysteries that required explanation: ‘To Say my Bible was so plain, Without a mystery The wise men did it all affirm, that Mysteries there were deep’ (Panacea Society, Bedford MSS 102, 66–8). In 1805 the Spirit compared the mysteries of the Bible with her own writings: ‘And know I have told thee, my Bible is as great a mystery to man as thy writings; and yet they will profess to say that my Bible is all fulfilled, when it is out of their power to prove it; and yet they will deny the truths that are contained in thy writings’ (‘A further explanation, given on Thursday 21st February 1805’, The Second Book of Sealed Prophecies (Ashford, 1920, first published 1805, 15–16)). Southcott’s vocation was to disclose the hidden meanings. While she always considered the Bible to have a unique authority, the relationship between her Spirit-inspired insights and the Bible itself is explored in a remarkable communication received by Southcott in April 1806. It followed a dream, in which she dreamt of binding her personal Bible tight with cord before boiling it, only for it to rise up out of the water. As she came to open the boiled Bible it began to disintegrate, such that she required a second Bible in order to read the passages in the Psalms where the first had been opened. The meaning of the dream, revealed by the Spirit, was that the binding of the first Bible referred to the way in which its meaning was hidden (‘perfect so is the mystery of my Bible [that] it is a Book bound up from the wisdom of all men’). The opening of the boiled Bible at the second Psalm referred to the contemporary visitation of the Spirit to Southcott. The second Bible was ‘thy Prophecies, which all men will find is the Word of God, like the Bible that is bound up and sealed up’. This new activity of the Spirit was necessary to clarify the mysteries of the Bible: ‘it must be the revelation of my Spirit to throw open all mysteries and make every truth clear, before the Bible can be discerned to what its perfect meaning is’ (Panacea Society MSS 114, 212–20, ‘Communication given to Joanna Southcott April 3rd 1806, On Boiling the Bible’). Like her seventeenth-century predecessors (below, p. 157), Southcott challenged the ‘professors’ of religion, who viewed prophecy and fulfilment, and indeed biblical typology, as a mode of interpreting the relationship between the testaments rather than having any contemporary existential impact. For many the voice of prophecy was a thing of the past, but the view that the Scripture prophecies were historically limited challenged the heart of Southcott’s vocation. Referring to Rev 19:10 (‘the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of Prophecy’) she criticised clergy who did not allow what she saw as the fulfilment of the Bible

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(Sound an Alarm on my Holy Mountain, Plymouth, 1804, reprinted 1913, 1–3). Southcott was not only interested in the way in which different parts of the Bible related to each other, but also how the biblical texts related to her and her mission; in other words, how the biblical promises themselves were ‘a shadow of good things to come’ (Heb 10:1). She had claimed to be the Woman clothed with the Sun in her first book in 1801 (‘I am ordered to put in print, the woman in the 12th chap. of Revelation is myself’, Southcott 1801: 42), and what happened in 1814 was the true import of the visionary passage about the manchild of Rev 12. Southcott made an enormous impact on early nineteenth-century London when at the age of sixty-four she claimed to be literally ‘acting out’ the visionary prophecy of the Woman clothed with the Sun of Revelation 12, the one to bear the man-child, whom she called Shiloh (Hopkins 1982: 20, 33; Juster 2003: 246–58). This name occurs in an obscure verse in Genesis 49:10, where the Authorised Version reads ‘until Shiloh come’. Jewish scholars interpreted this as a future messianic figure. Such an interpretation is also found in the Geneva Bible, for example, where we find a marginal note against this verse, which glosses: ‘Which is Christ the Messiah, the giver of prosperity who shall call the Gentiles to salvation’. The conviction that she was to give birth to the messianic Shiloh dominated the last months of Joanna’s life, and she died in 1814 still convinced of it.2 Although the man-child did not appear on earth, a large number of Southcott’s followers believed him to have been ‘caught up to heaven’ on his birth, as in Revelation (12:5). Strong prophetic conviction is also evident in the writings of Richard Brothers (1757–1824), with whom Southcott’s life and work was for a time so closely intertwined and whose views she rejected. Some of Brothers’ followers later followed Southcott (Mee 1992; Lockley 2009; Madden 2010). Brothers believed that he was the prophet who would be revealed to the Jews as the one to lead them to the land of Israel, and that their government under God would be committed to him, as the agent of the everlasting Covenant with David. His reading of the scriptures, inspired by revealed knowledge, opened up their true meaning. He it was who expounded the ‘strange’ and ‘difficult’ allusions made by John of the Apocalypse, whose true meaning had been sealed until ‘the full time’ when the appointed person (Brothers) would make known the message. Brothers, like Southcott, turned to Revelation 12 and the vision of the Woman, but he saw himself as the man-child, Shiloh, the King of Judah. At the outset of his prophetic vocation, he had visions, as well as conversations with God. Nevertheless, rational reflection on such experiences was crucial for him in

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order to understand how these evelations fitted into his theological scheme. His prophetic ministry was part of a response to a British government committed to a war with the French Revolutionary armies during a time of food shortages and political unrest. Brothers took an anti-war stance and refused to swear oaths of allegiance (cf. Matthew 5:9, 34). These principles were combined with a stated intention to seize the throne of George III in 1795, before leading his exodus to Israel in 1798. Brothers also bitterly denounced the slave trade by using the apocalyptic and bloody images of Revelation. As with Southcott, his prophecy was widely distributed and its readership included the ‘polite’ and educated as well as those deemed credulous or ‘enthusiastic’. Not surprisingly, his activities attracted the attention of those in power. While he was in a mental asylum, his prophetic understanding moved from the urgent and violent rhetoric of millennial doom to a more optimistic, quasi-utopian vision. The self-consciously marginal and displaced prophet of the earlier writings became God’s powerful agent; the appointed King and ruler of a new ‘Hebrew Constitution’ for the Jewish people in his own apocalyptic drama; the prince of the Hebrews at the centre of the New Jerusalem, one who had a significant part in the fulfilment of the scriptural promises. There is one further figure, John Ward (alias ‘Zion’ Ward, 1781–1837), who has a greater theological affinity with Blake. Ward was a follower of Joanna Southcott who later believed himself her successor. Amongst his several claims, he was the Divine Woman Wisdom herself while also asserting that in himself God was present (Oliver 1978: 153; Harrison 1979: 152–60; Stunt 2004). Ward was distinguished from other contemporary prophetic claimants, however, by his mixing radical politics with millenarianism and theological assertiveness (Lockley 2009). He spoke to large crowds at the time of agitations connected with the Reform Bill in 1831, attracting impressive audiences to the radical Blackfriars Rotunda theatre in London. By appearing in such venues, he became involved with, and possibly influenced by, the political radicalism and atheism of Richard Carlile. Ward identified himself with the messianic child born to Southcott in 1814. In 1828 he claimed that Joanna had visited him and given instructions to pass on to her surviving followers that they should accept Ward as their leader. Ward asserted that the Bible was not history but allegory and a prediction of the coming messiah, namely, himself. As he came to preach this message to public audiences, Ward added a libertarian message, asserted the divinising of humanity, advocated antinomianism, and, like many radicals before him, spoke virulently against the clergy. ‘Babylon’ of Revelation 17 was not just

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the Roman Catholic Church but also all outward religion, and his pronouncements became increasingly political as he denounced the taxes laid on the poor (Oliver 1978: 164). His message was universalist and directed to those who ‘knew no peace’, needing to deny ‘priestcraft’ and accept a message that God is love. He rejected heaven as a discrete place, hell and eternal damnation, the virgin birth and the existence of the historical Jesus. In 1832 he was imprisoned for blasphemy. Like Abiezer Coppe (below, p. 172), his theological ancestor from the mid-seventeenth century, Ward saw himself as the embodiment of the divine, and the autonomous exponent of the divine will because the divine dwelt in him. BLAKE’S ‘POETIC

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A simple distinction may be made between prophecy as ‘forth telling’ (roughly speaking, pronouncing the divine word about society and individuals) and ‘foretelling’ (predicting that which is to come in the future). That distinction is one which is important and is needed to complement the variety of prophetic activity described in Susan Juster’s book, where Blake is only marginal to the account she offers (Juster 2003). Blake is to be placed more in the former than the latter category. He was primarily a critic, not one who predicted future events (indeed, he seldom did that). He expressed clear views on the importance of prophecy, its ordinariness and its inclusiveness. ‘Every honest man is a Prophet’ (Annotations to Watson’s Apology 14, E617; cf. MHH12, E38, ‘the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God’). Prophecy entails a ‘down to earth’, common-sense approach to life, to be practised by all people. Blake looked upon the prophets as his companions and predecessors. It was a costly attitude, not only in terms of its consequences (Blake’s hurt at the rejection of his artistic work is palpable), but also the effort and energy which the creative act demanded. Blake suggests that some of what he wrote was as the result of dictation (J3, E145), though this involved the laborious process of writing that which was dictated onto copper plates, a considerable technical and physical feat. The central part that prophecy played as a crucial motivator for the religion that became crystallised in the Bible is succinctly recognised by Blake in one of his early works: PRINCIPLE. 5. The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nations different reception of the Poetic Genius which is every where call’d the Spirit of Prophecy.

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PRINCIPLE 6 The Jewish & Christian Testaments are An original derivation from the Poetic Genius. this is necessary from the confined nature of bodily sensation. (All Religions are One, E1)

Blake thought of himself as standing in a tradition of prophets, especially Ezekiel and John of Patmos, and was himself the medium of his own prophetic message in the way in which he produced his illuminated books (Tannenbaum 1982: 74–5). To him, the prophets of the Bible were kindred spirits, and his own prophecies reflect their style. ‘He spoke with authority; not in the least like the Scribes of his day’, wrote Swinburne in his essay on Blake, echoing Mark 1:22 (Swinburne 1868: 3), yet he also stressed Blake’s obscurity and lack of influence on his contemporaries. The style of biblical prophecy had been the subject of detailed examination by Robert Lowth in his Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews (first published 1753). This book had a far-reaching impact on late eighteenth-century authors, probably including Blake (Prickett and Strathman 2006). When Lowth writes of Isaiah’s ‘prophetic impulse, which bears away the mind with irresistible violence, and frequently in rapid transitions from near to remote objects, from human to divine’ (op. cit., 289; Tannenbaum 1982: 27), he could have been writing of the character and confusion of some of Blake’s prophetic texts, suggesting that Blake mimicked the genre of prophetic texts and their mix of styles (Tannenbaum 1982: 49–51). Blake briefly expounded his views on prophecy in 1798 in one of his annotations to Watson’s Apology. In response to Watson’s remark directed at Tom Paine, ‘You esteem all prophets to be such lying rascals, that I dare not venture to predict the fate of your book’, Blake wrote: Prophets, in the modern sense of the word, have never existed. Jonah was no prophet, in the modern sense, for his prophecy of Nineveh failed. Every honest man is a Prophet; he utters his opinion both of private & public matters. Thus: If you go on So, the result is So. He never says, such a thing shall happen let you do what you will. A Prophet is a Seer, not an Arbitrary Dictator. It is man’s fault if God is not able to do him good. For he gives to the just & to the unjust, but the unjust reject his gift. (‘Annotations to Watson’s Apology’, punctuation as Keynes 392; E617)

Thus prophecy is not a role reserved for a privileged religious elite. That said, Blake’s view of himself seemed to be of one who had a peculiar ability to open

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the doors of perception and understanding. He was, perhaps surprisingly, not actively involved in politics, though it was not for want of trying, nor should we ignore the charge of sedition levelled against him for his alleged remarks to a British soldier about the King of England in 1803 (Bentley 2001: 261–6). Unlike both Southcott and Brothers, he was not part of any wider mass movement except for a brief, though marginal, attachment to radicals in London in the early 1790s. Blake’s works seem at times more self-consciously obscure than the writings of Southcott and Brothers, reflecting the enigmatic aspects of biblical prophecy. There is also none of the utopian spirit of Brothers’ work. What there is, however, is a grasp of human psychology which suggests that he understood the complexity of the nature of redemption as well as the interweaving of the individual and political in bringing that about. Blake wrote prophecies about the nations, the ‘Continental Prophecies’ (e.g., Europe A Prophecy and America A Prophecy, 1793–4, and Africa and Asia in The Song of Los), in the form of illuminated books in which, through word and picture, a process of conversion, both spiritual and political, is encouraged in the reader. The experience of reading these texts is as puzzling as any biblical prophecy. Take the opening of Europe (Plate 3(4), E60). Blake, whether intentionally or not, leaves the reader uncertain and wondering about the precise meaning of what he reads, rather like the puzzlement of King Ahaz after the Immanuel oracle in Isaiah 7:10–17. There is no certainty that one has grasped his meaning because the text is problematised by the sometimes tenuous links between text and designs. The pursuit of meaning therefore needs to be creative. . . . the fascinating quality of Blake’s writings seems to have a lot to do with their potential to generate, each time one returns to one of his poems, a critical reexamination of the premises of one’s own reading procedures. This process will call for continual revisions and refinements of any earlier understanding of a given poem and, certainly, it is rather irksome. It forces the reader/spectator to live through the works again and again, to invest personally into the act of reading. At the same time, however, the potential (and personal) meaning of Blake’s works will be found to expand beyond the seemingly stable interpretations fashioned by art history and literary criticism. (Dörrbecker 1995: 153)

The indeterminate relationship between text and illumination demands that readers engage with the text, so that their own imagination may contribute to making sense of the relationship between the two (Glen 1983: 71). Like the

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biblical prophetic texts, Blake’s prophecy requires readers to participate, using their imagination to explore the tensions and problems that the text poses. There is no explanatory key which will make the prophecy transparent. As with prophecy in the Bible, its function is to ‘rouze the faculties to act’ (E702). The Bible hardly ever offers easy answers: its imagery, its challenging message and its alternative perspective are all directed to changed outlook and practice, as happened in the case of Job. Blake seeks to discern the eternal in the midst of history. Poetry and the life of the imagination are linked, enabling the poet/prophet to explore the meaning of events. In Blake’s work his great hero is Los. Los has the ‘spirit of prophecy’ and is called Elijah ( J39:31, E187). It is he who inspires Blake (M22:5–14, E116–17; 36:21, E137). In the early works he is linked with the activity of Orc, the energetic pioneer of revolution (cf. Europe 15:9, E66), though in Blake’s mythology the imaginative and the prophetic have an ambiguous relationship with the revolutionary. In his early illuminated works, such as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the Spirit is closely linked with energy, reflecting the optimistic and hopeful tone of 1790 (MHH 4, E34). But things change: Los binds Orc with chains of jealousy (The Song of Los, 3:21, E67). Los’s work is linked with the promotion of key Blakean virtues: justice, mercy, and forgiveness ( J88:49–50, E247). That sense of vocation and the trepidation it engenders is captured in these lines at the beginning of Jerusalem: Trembling I sit day and night, my friends are astonish’d at me./Yet they forgive my wanderings, I rest not from my great task!/To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes/Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity/Ever expanding in the Bosom of God. the Human Imagination/O Saviour pour upon me thy Spirit of meekness & love:/Annihilate the Selfhood in me, be thou all my life! ( J5:16–22, E147)

It is with Los as a blacksmith that Blake identifies, especially in Jerusalem. Los labours to become ‘One’ with Jesus ( J93:18, E253) and summons all, even his tormentors, to ‘be united in Jesus!’ ( J93:19, E253). Los is depicted as a blacksmith, attending to furnaces in order to forge and remake. The sense of an apocalyptic struggle and energetic effort is very much to the fore. It is the prophet’s role to hammer out a way of justice as a herald to the Lamb of God ( J88:49–54, E247), whereas ‘war and princedom and victory!’ ( Jerusalem 4:31–2, E147) require a religion of vengeance and a doctrine of sin. The struggle, whether it is

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in creation or redemption, is something which is not immediately apparent in the Bible. Closer inspection reveals that it may well be present, however. It does break through occasionally in the pre-Exilic prophets, such as in Isaiah 6:5, and especially in Elijah’s sense of isolation (1 Kings 19:3–5). Elijah was a key figure for Blake as the invocation of a ‘chariot of fire’ makes clear (Preface to Milton, E95), but the awareness of the psychological effect of the prophetic call is more noticeable in the writings of Ezekiel and Jeremiah. In the former we witness as observers the cost of the prophetic activity, culminating in the removal of the ‘desire of the prophet’s eyes’ in the death of his wife in Ezekiel 24:18 (a subject which Blake painted, c. 1785; Philadelphia Museum of Art, B165/6). It is in the prophecy of Jeremiah, however, that we find the exposition of the personal and psychological cost of prophetic activity, both in the accounts of the effects of Jeremiah’s controversial activity and in the so-called ‘confessions’ of Jeremiah, in which the prophet laments the difficulties of his calling (e.g. Jeremiah 15:10–18; 17:5–8; 20:7–12). In sum, Blake’s career, though similar in the depth of its prophetic convictions, was altogether different in its public effects from his prophetic contemporaries and predecessors. Take his seventeenth-century predecessor, Anna Trapnel, who spoke of God forcing her out of the seclusion of a quiet life and into the centre of English political life, in Whitehall. She became an unwilling voice in the wilderness, like Jeremiah: ‘the Lord God has spoken who can but prophesy?’ (Amos 3:8 NRSV, Hinds 2000; Holstun 2000: 284, 296). She took centre-stage, like Joanna Southcott. Similarly, as we shall see, the seventeenthcentury self-proclaimed prophet Abiezer Coppe saw himself as an embodiment of the divine and mimicked their behaviour (Makdisi 2003). Like Ezekiel who performed some strange symbolic acts, so Coppe offers the ‘strange postures’ of one who incarnates the ‘most excellent majesty’ as signs to his generation. (A Fiery Flying Roll 104; Hawes 1996: 91; Smith 1989: 55). This was very different from Blake, whose only brush with authority, though of great significance for himself, was never nationally prominent. Morton Paley places Blake’s millenarian spirit in relation to Joachim, the Free Spirit, and the Ranters, and links Brothers’ model of Jerusalem to Blake’s Golgonooza, both of which were inspired by Revelation and Ezekiel (Paley 1999: 11, 32–90). For Paley, Southcott and Brothers were both failed messiahs, whereas Blake created an ‘Allegory addressed to the Intellectual powers’ (Letter to Butts, 16 July 1803, E730; Paley 1973:292). Like Brothers, Southcott was an inspired interpreter of Scripture.3 Blake’s relationship to the Bible was less interpretative and altogether more free-ranging. The biblical

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images and themes form the inspiration of his prophecy, but he never devoted himself to the detailed interpretation of the biblical text. The Bible offered a prophetic springboard, not an object of study. Southcott, Brothers and Blake acted out scripture differently. In Joanna Southcott’s case, the Woman Clothed with the Sun is a visionary figure, paralleling the ‘one like a Son of man’ in Daniel 7 (with whom Jesus is said to have identified himself in the canonical gospels). Brothers, on the other hand, sees himself as a very human eschatological figure, the Prince of the Hebrews, a latter day nasi (prince) such as had been prophesied by Ezekiel (Ezek 45:22). Brothers too reflects utopian interests in making detailed plans for a new world. Blake has a generalised sense of his prophetic vocation rather than fulfilling a specific role in some kind of eschatological drama inspired by the Bible. Southcott and Brothers in different ways actualise the text, whereas Blake expands it and builds upon it in a way which sits loose to the original as a new prophetic text is formed from the members of the old. His prophetic works go their own way, mimicking and reconfiguring elements of the biblical text (O’Regan 2002: 219–22). As already suggested, theologically Blake has most in common with his younger contemporary, ‘Zion’ Ward (and with the earlier Abiezer Coppe, Makdisi 2003: 289–91). His understanding of the divine in human is akin to Ward’s assertion. Ward seems to have regarded this as a charisma rather than a basic characteristic of humanity, though he was regarded as a ‘brother beloved of God as all men are’ (Oliver 1978: 166). He did not think that his position was exclusive, therefore. Indeed, he saw himself as the ‘first of the race of sons’ (Oliver 1978: 165). In a famous encounter with Crabb Robinson in 1825 Blake is reported to have said ‘we are all co-existent with God – Members of the Divine Body. We are all partakers of the divine nature’. When Robinson asked Blake what he thought of the divinity of Jesus Christ, Blake said, ‘he is the only God’, but then added, ‘And so am I and so are you’ (Bentley 2002: 310–11; Makdisi 2003: 315). Blake, like Ward, believed that sin was less doing wrong and more false consciousness about oneself and about God. Thus, Ward could write that the devil is ‘an evil thought, thinking contrary to the supreme reason – when the eternal reason dwells in a man he is ever happy, has quietness and assurance for ever’ (Oliver 1978:166). Blake believed that the Bible contained ‘Sentiments and Examples’ (‘Annotations to Watson’s Apology’, E618), but Ward went a step further and understood the Bible as an elaborate allegory relating to himself, who fulfilled it. The major difference between Ward and Blake is that while both had a strong conviction about the divine in human and the theology of both might be characterised as ‘a kind of humanistic pantheism’ (so Oliver

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1978: 166), Blake did not have the kind of public persona that led Ward to be part of the radical political scene of the 1820s. BLAKE

THE VISIONARY

Blake rarely describes his visions in detail. There is a passage, however, in which he does explicitly describe a mystical experience, some features of which resemble what we find in ancient texts describing heavenly ascents. Writing to Thomas Butts, Blake described how, on the shore at Felpham, sea and sunlight combined in his imagination and led to what appears to have been a state of ecstasy and awareness of himself as being part of the divine (Letter 16 to Butts, 2 October 1800; E712; Bentley 2001: 216–20; and for another ‘mystical experience’, Blake’s letter to William Hayley of 23 October, 1804, E756; Roberts 2010). To my Friend Butts I write My first Vision of Light, On the yellow sands sitting. The Sun was Emitting His Glorious beams From Heavens high Streams. Over Sea, over Land My Eyes did Expand Into regions of air Away from all Care, Into regions of fire Remote from Desire; The Light of the Morning Heaven’s Mountains adorning: In particles bright The jewels of Light Distinct shone & clear. Amaz’d & in fear I each particle gazed, Astonish’d, Amazed; For each was a Man Human formd. Swift I ran, For they beckond to me Remote by the Sea,

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Saying: Each grain of Sand, Every Stone on the Land, Each rock & each hill, Each fountain & rill, Each herb & each tree, Mountain, hill, earth & sea, Cloud, Meteor & Star, Are Men Seen Afar. I stood in the Streams Of Heavens bright beams, And Saw Felpham sweet Beneath my bright feet In soft Female charms; And in her fair arms My Shadow I knew And my wife’s shadow too, And My Sister & Friend. We like Infants descend In our Shadows on Earth, Like a weak mortal birth. My Eyes more & more Like a Sea without shore Continue Expanding, The Heavens commanding, Till the Jewels of Light, Heavenly Men beaming bright, Appear’d as One Man Who Complacent began My limbs to infold In his beams of bright gold; Like dross purg’d away All my mire & my clay. Soft consum’d in delight In his bosom Sun bright I remain’d. Soft he smil’d, And I heard his voice Mild Saying: This is My Fold, O thou Ram horn’d with gold,

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Who awakest from Sleep On the sides of the Deep. On the Mountains around The roarings resound Of the lion & wolf, The loud Sea & deep gulf. These are guards of My Fold, O thou Ram hornd with gold! And the voice faded mild. I remain’d as a Child; All I ever had known Before me bright Shone. I saw you & your wife By the fountains of Life. Such the Vision to me Appear’d on the Sea. (Punctuated as Keynes 804–6)

Blake here comes closest to describing the kind of vision of transformation familiar from Jewish and Christian apocalyptic ascent texts. The sight of sun and sea at Felpham conjured in his imagination what appears to be an ascent into the heavenly world. Just as those moments where he saw the heavenly host in the sunlight (‘A Vision of the Last Judgment’, E565–6) and ‘a world in a grain of sand’ (‘Auguries of Innocence’, E490), so here too the natural world launches him into a mystical experience. In it he describes his fear, and the ways in which the meteors and stars become human in form, like angels, just as the righteous are like stars in heaven (Dan 12:3 and Phil 2:22). Blake is aware of looking down on Felpham, and being accompanied by Catherine, soaring to heaven just as Enoch described (1 Enoch 14:8–20, a passage that Blake later sketched, above, p. 115). To be ‘out of the body’ means, presumably, that the body of flesh is left behind, as Paul describes in 2 Cor 12:2–4: ‘I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth) how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter’. The climax of the experience is a transformation in which ‘all my mire & clay’ is ‘like dross purgd away’. ‘Putting off the body of flesh’ (to use the language of Colossians 2) is a way of discussing

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redemption which Blake both depicts (Milton, Plate 13) and writes about in terms of Mary’s appropriation of Christ’s experience on the cross in The Everlasting Gospel (E522–3, discussed below, p. 189). Blake writes of putting off selfhood (M40:36, E142; cf. J89:10, E248) and mortality (FZviii:484, E383). The climax comes when his limbs are ‘infolded in the One man’ who includes all the other heavenly beings. Blake is the ‘ram hornd with gold’ (cf. Rev 5:6; 1 Enoch 88:73) who now wakes from mental slumber to see reality as it is within the body of the One Man Jesus. As with the Transfiguration the vision faded and Blake was left alone as a child, but also a Lamb like his Maker. It was, however, a moment of apocalypse, or disclosure about the totality of Blake’s life in which Butts and his wife are seen beside the fountains of life (cf. Rev 7:17; 21:6; 22:1–2). In Blake’s works, as in the Book of Revelation, events, natural phenomena and texts serve as a means of stimulating the imagination. Events in the poet’s imagination have become part of, and transmuted into, the prophet’s visionary world. Their original historical significance is transcended. Intellects rightly attuned may perceive ‘visions of eternity’; it is ‘to the eyes of the man of imagination, [that] nature [can be] imagination itself’ (Letter to Trusler, 23 August 1799, E702). What is needed is the encouragement of a way of reading which will enable the imaginative reader to respond to the question: When the Sun rises, do you not see a round Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea? O no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying ‘Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.’ I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight. I look thro’ it & not with it. (‘A Vision of the Last Judgment’ E565–6)

Seers and artists explore hidden dimensions of life. Unmasking the inner dynamic of history, life and individual psychology, their potential for positive change and their corruption, is at the heart of Blake’s work. Nowhere is this better seen than in Blake’s prophecies, America and Europe. They were not predictions of what would happen; not another form of the sayings of Nostradamus or Joanna Southcott, for they were written after the events that are described. There is something uncannily insightful about the retroactive effects of the English response in America. Two hundred years on the whirlwind of North American culture and economic life can be seen to be engulfing Britain in ways which Blake intuitively glimpsed. What Blake does, particularly in America,

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is to show the way humans and super-human forces combine in an awesome story of force and counter-force: ‘From the four cliffs of Albion rise, mustering around their Prince;/Angels of cities and of parishes and villages and families,/ In armour as the nerves of wisdom, each his station holds’ (America 16, E59). Here, as in the Jewish and early Christian apocalyptic thought-world, humans and angels mingle together in war and politics. The heavenly host, with the leading angels, and those angels’ relationship with humankind, were all part of the fabric of the apocalyptic world of the writers, whose views are found in the pages of the New Testament. Blake stands with them in thinking that the angelic representations of peoples and nations are part of the fabric of the universe and its functioning, which cannot be understood adequately without them (e.g. Wink 1984). In the later biblical material, particularly the book of Daniel and the apocalyptic writings, we find that God is served by exalted angels like Michael (Dan 10:13 and 21) and Gabriel (Dan 8:15–6; 10:5–7). Michael was regarded as the guardian angel of the people of Israel and their representative in the heavenly court (Dan 12:1; cf. Rev 12:7–10). Matthew 18:10 is typical of the beliefs of biblical writers, in which guardian angels represent not only nations but also individuals before the throne of God: ‘Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.’ Thus, there is a close relationship between heaven and earth as angels in heaven mirror the struggles and destiny of the nations and individuals they sponsor. Angels and humans combine in a cosmic struggle in the War Scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QM) and thereby participate in the earthly counterpart of the angelic struggle in heaven.4 As we shall see when we consider the ‘Holy Thursday’ poems (below, p. 152), it was the sight of the angelic host that the poet imagined in St Paul’s cathedral, but the awesome apocalypse pointed to another reality outside the door, in the wider world of the streets of London. BLAKE

AMONG THE PROPHETS: THE BIBLICAL BACKGROUND

Prophetic texts are a key part of the Hebrew Bible, a distinctive aspect of ancient Jewish religion and a key component of Christian origins (Blenkinsopp 1996; Aune 1983). The origins of prophecy lie in shaman-like ecstatic prophecy, divination, soothsaying and dream-interpretation (e.g. 1 Sam 10:6–13; Gen 37:5–11, Ashton 2000). The texts, which we now have in the Hebrew Bible, reflect the activity of figures whose prophetic vocation led them to criticise the

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religion and politics of Israel and Judah (1 Kings 18–19), and those elements are very much on the margins of the extant literary remains. Moses is the archetypical prophetic figure in Jewish tradition, and the biblical prophets continue his ministry (Deuteronomy 18:15–20; Pirke Aboth 1:1). Elijah especially, linked as he was with the mountain of God in 1 Kings 19, is the continuation of the political activity of figures who are thorns in the sides of those in political power, whether the Pharaoh in Egypt, or King Ahab in Israel. Often, as with Elijah and Moses, the actions of prophets were eccentric and their demeanour unconventional (1 Sam 15:27–8; Isa 20; Ezek 3:1, 4 and 5; Rev 10). ‘Classical’ prophecy, as we have it in the Bible, is based mainly on words in which the prophet is a channel of the divine word both to the Jewish people and also to the nations (e.g. Isa 23; Jer 46–9). The prophet is a mediator of divine wisdom and power, through vision, as a channel of divine speech and a peculiar awe in the face of the divine. Visions were a crucial aspect of prophetic call and activity, of which Isaiah’s and Jeremiah’s experiences are typical (Isa 6 and Jer 1: 11 and 13; Amos 7:1–9). The prophetic calling came about through some dramatic experience of the divine, often a vision. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of Ezekiel. His call, described in Ezekiel 1 (like that of Isaiah, which actually took place in the midst of the Temple in Jerusalem, Isa 6), is a fiery theophany, full of images linked with the Temple, though it was a vision which the prophet saw while exiled far away by the river Chebar in Babylon. That vision of the throne-chariot (the merkabah), full of eyes and attended by the faces of different creatures, culminates in the sight of a fiery human figure who summons the prophet to his task. This became the fundamental inspiration for visionary activity in both Judaism and Christianity. After the exile of the Jewish elite to Babylon, prophets were probably involved in the power struggle over the future of the nation, with differences of opinion over whether the Temple should be rebuilt: the prophets who wrote the later chapters of Isaiah (Chapters 40–66) were ranged on one side, and Haggai and Zechariah, and probably the author of the last chapters of Ezekiel on the other (Ezek 40–48; Hanson 1974, but cf. Cook 1995). Prophecy never died out in emerging Judaism but gradually moved to the margins of Jewish culture and became the object of suspicion (hinted at in Zech 13). Prophetic figures remained a feature of Jewish life and are part of the context for understanding Jesus and John the Baptist ( Josephus, Jewish War vi. 281 and 301; and idem, Antiquities of the Jews xx. 97, 167, 185; Gray 1993). The focus in Judaism was increasingly on Temple and Torah (Barton 1986). Those who continued to claim inspiration had to do so in terms of the past. So

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they claimed authority for their visions by attributing them to great figures of the past, like Enoch or Ezra. This is one possible explanation for the emergence of pseudepigraphy in Second Temple Jewish apocalyptic texts, and this became a feature of early Christian literature too (Rowland 1982). Prophecy after the return of Jews from exile in Babylon saw a greater presence of exotic imagery, which was to become even more evident in the Jewish apocalypses. This is especially evident in Zechariah and in Ezekiel. In early apocalyptic writings we have reports of ascents to heaven to receive knowledge of the divine mysteries (1 Enoch 14 and Rev 4 are good examples), and the significance of dreams remained important (Dan 7–10, Flannery-Dailey 2004). There is evidence to suggest that the return of prophecy (and the inspiration of the divine spirit) was seen in some quarters as a sign of the Last Days (Tosefta Sotah 13:2), thereby marginalising prophecy as part of the contemporary experience of the religious community. This is the implication of Luke’s account of the Day of Pentecost, where the crucial addition of ‘In the last days’ to ‘I will pour out my spirit on all flesh’ (Acts 2:17) indicates that early Christians believed that something distinctive was happening and prophecy was a mark of the dawning of the Kingdom of God. Gospel accounts suggest that Jesus saw himself as a prophet (Mark 6:4; Luke 13:33) and especially in the account of the beginning of his ministry in Luke 4: 18–21. He was thought to be a prophet by his contemporaries, as certain reports about reaction to Jesus indicate (Matt. 21:11; Luke 7:16; John 6:14; cf Deuteronomy 18:15; Numbers 11:29). Jesus based his authority to speak in this way on a vision. Indeed, the baptism account has affinities with the calls to prophecy of prophets like Isaiah, Ezekiel and Second Isaiah (Isa 6:1; 42:1; Ezek 1:1). Jesus condemned his generation for their unbelief and places himself in the long line of prophets who have done the same (Luke 11:49–51). Like them, he is rejected by his contemporaries (Mark 6:4–5; cf. Jer 15:10 and 20). It is the conviction that he has to speak God’s word to the people, particularly at the heart of the Jewish religion in metropolitan Jerusalem, which takes him to his death (Luke 13:31–3). In doing this, he expects suffering and death as the prophets had suffered before him (Luke 11:49). Occasionally, in the synoptic gospels, and more frequently in the Gospel of John, Jesus is depicted as the emissary of God (‘the Father who sent me’ is a repeated theme, e.g. John 8:18). In Luke 10:16 Jesus speaks of himself as the one sent by God by means of the concept of agency, where an individual is sent by another to act on his behalf, so that the agent becomes living presence of the one who sent him (as explained in the early rabbinic text Sifre on Numbers 12:8, Borgen 1997: 84). The close link between the activity of Jesus and the divine purposes is

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brought out in the Gospel of John by means of the agency formula (e.g. John 7:16; 12:44). The overlap between the agent of God and the prophet is clear in the language used of prophetic calls, especially in a passage like Isaiah 6, where the divine beings in conversation in the heavenly court, say: ‘Whom shall we send and who will go for us?’ (Isa 6:8, a passage alluded to in Europe, Plate 7(8), E62). The notion of agency is important also for understanding Paul’s sense of vocation as an apostle (in Greek, one who is sent) which relates him to the prophets (hinted at in Gal 1:15, where Isa 49:1 and Jer 1:5 are alluded to, Ashton 2000). The vision of Christ on the Damascus road seems to have been of the same kind as the visions granted to the prophets and is also similar to those described in some apocalyptic writings. Paul received the revelation (the Greek word apokalypsis is used in Gal 1:12) of the gospel and was told that he was called to reveal the ‘mystery’ of God’s plan that salvation in Christ applied equally to both Jews and Gentiles. So, Paul claimed the right to ‘act out’ the prophetic promise and bring Gentiles into the covenant himself. He was the agent of the divine plan to bring into effect this eschatological event. ‘I

DINED WITH

E Z E K I E L ’: B L A K E , E Z E K I E L

AND THE MERKABAH

The central image of Blake, from whenever he first formulated his mythology, is Ezekiel’s; the Merkabah, Divine Chariot or form of God in motion. The Living Creatures or Four Zoas are Ezekiel’s and not initially Blake’s, a priority of invention that Blake’s critics, in their search for more esoteric sources, sometimes evade. Ezekiel, in regard to Blake’s Jerusalem, is like Homer in regard to the Aeneid: the inventor, the precursor, and the shaper of the later work’s continuities. From Ezekiel in particular Blake learned the true meaning of prophet, visionary orator, honest man who speaks into the heart of a situation to warn: if you go on so, the result is so; or as Blake said, a seer and not an arbitrary dictator. (Bloom 1971: 66)

These words, from a distinguished writer on Blake’s work, stress the central importance of the prophet Ezekiel, and, specifically, Ezekiel’s dramatic call vision (the merkabah vision). As we shall see when we consider Blake’s interpretation of the Book of Revelation, the biblical text is taken up and used in Blake’s own way, leaving behind those features which sit so ill with Blake’s understanding of the divine life. In particular, he discarded the frequent emphasis on holiness and the qualitative distinction between the human and the divine, which is more prominent in Ezekiel than in any other biblical book (e.g . Ezek 36:22–4). The prominence

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given to the human in the divine is, however, a feature of Ezekiel’s vision (Ezek 1:5, 10, 26–7; cf. 43:7 ‘soles of my feet’). Nonetheless, Bloom’s words are an appropriate introduction to a consideration of one of the most remarkable aspects of the history of interpretation of any prophetic text, the appropriation of Ezekiel’s vision as a stimulus for mystical experience. Ezekiel’s merkabah has a prominent place in Blake’s work, forming the inspiration of his major, though unfinished, poetic work The Four Zoas, in which the mysteries of the human character are plumbed (Bentley 1963). Interestingly, Blake’s psychological application of Ezekiel anticipates modern explanations of its imagery and the prophet’s behaviour (Halperin 1993). The link between humanity and divinity, as well as the complexity of human personality, is hinted at in the painting ‘Ezekiel’s Wheels’ (1803–5; Museum of Fine Art, Boston, B 468), redolent of that humanity in divinity found in the Jewish and early patristic exegesis of the merkabah. What is striking about this picture is that it is the human figure among the four creatures surrounding the divine throne-chariot (man, lion, ox and eagle, Ezek 1:5, 10) that is prominently depicted. Indeed, in Jewish interpretations (e.g. Genesis Rabbah 47:6; 69:3; 82:6; Targumim on Genesis 28:12, Rowland 1984) it is the human figure of a man which was especially picked out and a link established between the divine merkabah and ancestors of the faith, such as Jacob or Abraham. Blake here also evokes the amber (h.ashmal in the Hebrew, Ezek 1:4, 27 cf. 8:2) and blue of the sapphire in Ezek 1:26, the first of which in particular is part of the reception history of this chapter (Halperin 1988). The prophet lies prostrate at the bottom of the picture, touched by the whirlwind above him, with hands raised in shock, like Eliphaz in his vision in the Job sequence. What attracts the viewer’s attention at the centre of the picture is the man, who looks directly at the viewer. Blake depicts three of the creatures as four-headed human figures (though only three of the corners of the chariot are evident and only the front three heads are visible; the other two have only two). The beard of the man at the front is tinged with orange; the heads on either side have a blue tinge. Wings sprout from behind the head of the man and, above, there is something like a hammock supporting the Almighty (the firmament of Ezek 1:22?), above which is the sapphire background to the divine throne (1:26). The many-headed figure has wings, reflecting both Ezekiel 1:6, 11 and Isaiah 6:2 (cf. Rev 4:8). The dominant human figure has hands outstretched and his right foot steps forward as if he is emerging from the picture. Around the human figure there is a swirling, circular movement, in which are splashes of red and streaks of blue, as well as the orange. The red signifies the fire, blue the

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crystal of the firmament and orange, possibly, the amber (which translates the Hebrew word h.ashmal, mentioned in Ezekiel 1:4 and 27, cf. 8:2). (The precise meaning of h.ashmal is obscure and has provoked a welter of speculation in later Jewish tradition: Halperin 1988; Morray-Jones and Rowland 2009.) Within the circular movement there are eyes, in the midst of what appears to be a bird’s head, probably reflecting the eagle. At the very top of the picture sits the Almighty on a stone seat, with hand raised, as if in blessing, with the last two fingers of his right hand slightly bent. Unlike several of the Job pictures, there is no book evident in the picture. Linked with Blake’s chariot imagery is his evocation of Psalm 18:10: ‘God rode upon the cherubim and did fly’ (‘David delivered out of many Waters: “He rode upon the Cherubim”’, c. 1805; Tate Gallery, London, B462, discussed by Johnson 1990). The sense of the figure riding on the very human-like vehicle is brilliantly captured, while the recumbent David watches this extraordinary apparition in a position similar to that taken by Ezekiel in his vision. One of the striking aspects of this picture is that Blake depicts the divinity as Christ, as in Engraving 17 of the Job series. This parallels not only the Job series but also the version he wrote of the Lord’s Prayer at roughly the same time as he was doing the Job engravings (E668, and p. 61 above). Blake’s The Four Zoas or Vala exists only in draft form (dated 1797), as he never turned it into a printed text (Bentley 1963; Rosso 1993; Lincoln 1995). He referred to this work in a letter of 1803 to Thomas Butts, saying that he had written ‘an immense number of verses on one Grand Theme. . . . From immediate Dictation, twelve or sometimes thirty lines at a time, without premeditation & even against my will’ (E729; on Blake’s etching technology and direct inspiration, Viscomi 1993, especially 42–3). What Blake termed the Four Zoas (making a plural out of a Greek word zöon/ zoa, which already is plural) feature in much of his mature work, both poetry and art. Blake identified the Zoas with different aspects of the human personality ( J32:31, E178; 98:12–24, E257): the body (which he termed Tharmas); reason (Urizen, the subject of the major critique of rationalist religion in Blake’s work of the 1790s); emotions (Luvah) and, finally, imagination (Urthona). He also linked them with the four compass points (M19:18, E112; 34:35, E134). Humanity made in the divine image (subject of two contrasting poems in Songs of Innocence and of Experience, E12–13 and 27) thus reflects the divine. The balance among these characteristics in humanity is crucial. Indeed, the dominance of reason over imagination provoked Blake’s criticism of religion. The ‘Four Zoas’, originally in Ezekiel 1 and then taken up in John’s vision (Revelation 4), turn up in ‘A Vision

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of the Last Judgment’ (E561). They also appear in the second title-page of the late Genesis illustrations (B828 2, Paley 2003: 263), where the contrasting habits of the four creatures are well brought out by Blake in the different postures they adopt. In the full-length poem which describes their activities the ‘Four Zoas’ are described as ‘four Wonders of the Almighty/Incomprehensible. pervading all amidst & round about/Fourfold each in the other reflected they are named Life’s in Eternity./Four Starry Universes going forward from Eternity to Eternity’ (FZix:281–5, E393). Blake used the ‘wheels within wheels’ (Ezek 1:16) as part of a critique of the ideology of the thinking of his day: I see the Four-fold Man. The Humanity in deadly sleep And its fallen Emanation. The Spectre and its cruel Shadow. I see the Past, Present & Future existing all at once Before me: O Divine Spirit sustain me on thy wings! That I may awake Albion from his long & cold repose. For Bacon and Newton sheathd in dismal steel, their terrors hang Like iron scourges over Albion, Reasonings like vast Serpents Infold around my limbs, bruising my minute articulations I turn my eyes to the Schools & Universities of Europe And there behold the Loom of Locke whose Woof rages dire Washd by the Water-wheels of Newton: black the cloth In heavy wreathes folds over every Nation; cruel Works Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic Moving by compulsion each other: not as those in Eden: which Wheel within Wheel, in freedom revolve in harmony & peace. ( J15:6–20, E159)

Here Blake relates the workings of the mind, which produce ignorance via machine-like activity, to the consequences in a society which produces ‘religion hid in war’. The ways of thinking in vogue at the universities leave no room for thought, still less for imagination. The water-wheels of Newton are mechanical and utterly predictable, and contrast with those in Eden. In Eden the chariot of life surrounded by the four living creatures offers true humanity and the entry into the world of imagination. An altogether more optimistic note is struck in Jerusalem 98:8–12 (E257), where the passage might be read as a chariot vision. When Bacon and Newton

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and Locke meet with Milton and Shakespeare and Chaucer, ‘The innumerable Chariots of the Almighty appear’d in heaven’. In this eschatological scenario ‘the Four Living Creatures Chariots of Humanity Divine Incomprehensible/In beautiful Paradises expand. . . . And the Four Faces of Humanity . . . going forward forward irresistible from Eternity to Eternity/And they conversed together in Visionary forms dramatic’ ( J98:8–28, E257). Here at the climax of Jerusalem is the equivalent of what John of the Revelation describes when he predicts ‘they shall see his face’ (Rev 22:4). For Blake that divine vision is the fullness of humanity revealed and enjoyed. In the Dante illustrations Blake was working on at the end of his life, Ezekiel’s merkabah is dominant in his depiction of Beatrice speaking to Dante from ‘that celestial chariot’ (1824–7; Tate Gallery, London, B812 88, Purgatorio xxx.92–129), a link with Ezekiel (and also with John of Patmos) which is hinted at explicitly by Dante himself (‘. . . read Ezekiel, who depicteth them As he beheld them from the region cold Coming with cloud, with whirlwind, and with fire; And such as thou shalt find them in his pages, Such were they here; saving that in their plumage John is with me, and differeth from him’). This is anticipated in the illustration that precedes this one in the series: ‘Beatrice on the Car, Matilda and Dante’ (B812 87), which has Matilda pointing to John’s seven candlesticks (Rev 1:12) and the car followed by the twenty-four elders (Rev 4:4; Purgatorio xxix.49; Paley 2003: 156; Fuller 1988). The link with the merkabah, however, is most evident in the shadowy shape of the four faces (eagle, lion, ox and human, though all depicted in the shape of human heads, Ezek 1:10; Rev 4:7) in the midst of the veil which surrounds Beatrice. These heads are similar iconographically to the depictions on the front of the roughly contemporary Illustrations to the Book of Genesis (B828 2). The wheels are akin to the whirling motion of ‘Ezekiel’s Wheels’ (B468), where peacock-like eyes are found in the wheels, as well as in the veil which surround Beatrice on the chariot.5 The merkabah, so called because what appeared to the prophet was chariotlike, has had a long history from the very earliest times, after the return from exile in Babylon, through the kabbalah and down to the hasidic movements nearer our own day (Jerusalem 27 offers a possible connection of Blake with the kabbalistic tradition: ‘You have a tradition, that Man anciently containd in his mighty limbs all things in Heaven & Earth’, E171; cf. Spector 2001). According to the Mishnah (the earliest collection of rabbinic teaching put together round about 200 CE), Jewish mysticism was a subject which was treated with great caution (Mishnah Hagigah 2:1). It is divided into two main branches, one concerned with cosmogony and cosmology based on Genesis 1 (ma’aseh

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bereshith) and the other based on Ezekiel 1 and the throne-chariot of God (ma‘aseh merkabah). In some interpretations of Ezekiel 1 the meaning of the text may have come about as the result of ‘seeing again’ what Ezekiel saw. Thus, the visionary’s own experience of what had appeared to Ezekiel becomes itself context for a creative interpretation of the text (Halperin 1988; Rowland 1982; Scholem 1955; Morray-Jones and Rowland 2009). For John of Patmos and his apocalyptic contemporaries in the first century CE, for example, a prophetic text like Ezekiel 1 was probably not just the subject of learned debate but a catalyst for visionary experience, as is found in the remarkable tradition of interpretation of Ezekiel 1. Exegesis and experience may have come together in meditative practice with affinities to later medieval monastic engagement with the Bible, in which the exercise of imagination involved the visualisation of what was read (on the importance of this for the background to Blake’s mix of words and images, Tannenbaum 1982: 55–65; Carruthers 1990; Lewis 1995; LeClercq 1961, especially 90–4). Ezekiel 1 also lies at the basis of John’s vision in Revelation 4–5. In his ‘Four and Twenty Elders’ (Tate Gallery, London B515; also below, p. 224) Blake depicted both of these chapters: rainbow; eyes; sealed scroll. Given the way in which the lamb is a feature in Blake’s writing from the time of Songs of Innocence up to the late Jerusalem, the lamb in this picture is curiously passive and anonymous, but perhaps appropriately for a creature bearing the marks of slaughter (Rev 5:6). Just as interesting, in the light of its enormous impact on modern biblical study, was his fascination with the then newly discovered Book of Enoch. As we have seen, among the unfinished sketches there is one of 1 Enoch 14:8–20, a passage which has exercised the minds of students of Second Temple Judaism because it offers an extended description of the vision of God, ‘The Great Glory’, enthroned in the inmost recesses of the heavenly Temple. 1 Enoch 14 is full of imagery borrowed from Ezekiel 1. Whether or not Blake used Ezekiel’s vision of the merkabah as the trigger of his own visions, as was discussed earlier in this chapter, is unclear. What is not in doubt is that Ezekiel’s merkabah was a significant inspiration and indeed formed the title of Blake’s unfinished The Four Zoas (Bentley 1963). THE BOOK

OF

REVELATION, JERUSALEM

AND

THE PROPHETIC STRUGGLE

Just as in the work of his theological predecessor Jacob Boehme (Fischer 2004: 94, 211), the apocalyptic imagery of the Book of Revelation forms a significant

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component of Blake’s visionary world (O’Regan 2002: 219–21), whether in terms of eschatology or visionary form and content. This strikes one with peculiar force when reading Jerusalem. There are many echoes, but as with much of Blake’s engagement with the Bible, these are interspersed with contemporary persons and events, as the geography and life of England are swept up into a creative fusion, with little apparent structure or direction. This interpretative approach typifies Blake’s way of viewing his own circumstances in terms of biblical imagery. In all of this, the bare essentials of biblical context carry over as the biblical material is woven into a new constellation of scriptural images. John’s apocalyptic vision is a central component of many aspects of Blake’s visionary world, even when he departs from some of its more violent and vengeful themes. It informs his understanding of his own political situation, as it has informed that of many others before and since, and was a dominant part of his mental furniture. For example, in 1798, in the margin of his copy of the Bishop of Llandaff’s Apology for the Bible, he wrote: ‘To defend the Bible in this year 1798 would cost a man his life. The Beast and the Whore rule without controls’ (E611). Blake rarely described what he wrote as an apocalypse, or revelation. He does so, however, at the beginning of The Ghost of Abel (1822, E270, and below, p. 208), which he describes as ‘A Revelation In the Visions of Jehovah’, to encourage Byron to espouse ‘spiritual vision’. Adam comes to recognise the importance of the visionary as crucial for life: ‘were it not better to believe Vision With all our might and strength tho we are fallen and lost’ (Ghost 2:2, E271). Even if he did not often use the word ‘revelation’, Blake very explicitly traced a continuity between his own mythical world and the vision seen by John: Los hears & weeps/And Los & Enitharmon took the Body of the Lamb/Down from the Cross & placd it in a Sepulcher which Los had hewn/For himself in the Rock of Eternity trembling & in despair/Jerusalem wept over the Sepulcher two thousand Years/Rahab triumphs over all she took Jerusalem/Captive A Willing Captive by delusive arts impelld/To worship Urizens Dragon form to offer her own Children/Upon the bloody Altar. John Saw these things Reveald in Heaven/On Patmos Isle & heard the Souls cry out to be deliverd/He saw the Harlot of the Kings of Earth & saw her Cup/Of fornication food of Orc & Satan pressd from the fruit of Mystery (FZviii:592–620, E385–6)

Here Blake’s application of the Bible is not so much typological (in which the two interpretative poles are juxtaposed, with one playing off and illuminating

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the other, cf. Tannenbaum 1982: 86–123) as informed by the conviction that John had already seen what he, Blake, had seen and was writing about: ‘John Saw these things Reveald in Heaven’. There is a continuity of prophetic charisma. Just as Elisha had a double portion of Elijah’s spirit (2 Kings 2:19; Luke 1:17), so the ‘Poetic Genius, the Spirit of Prophecy’ that was at work in John of Patmos is present in Blake also (All Religions are One, Principle 5, E1). Echoes of the Book of Revelation may be seen throughout Jerusalem. Blake’s harlot daughter ( Jerusalem) is the divine bride (Rev 21); his virgin (Vala) is the whore (Rev 17). Apollyon (Rev 9:11) wields a bow (cf. Rev 6:2) of ‘Demonstrative Science’; the great dragon (Rev 12:3; 13:4) is animated by the infernal trinity of rationalism and empiricism (‘Bacon & Newton & Locke’, e.g. J54:17, and 98:9, E203 and 257). The fires of judgment turn out to be the cathartic water of life ( J96:35–7, E256), and eternal judgment of the great white throne (Rev 20:11) is forgiveness, for Blake’s apocalypse, unlike John’s apocalypse, ends in the restoration of all things and universal forgiveness from which no one is excluded. In Revelation, John is taken by an angel ‘to a great and high mountain’ where he sees ‘the holy Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God’ (Rev 21:10 cf. J86:19, E244). In Blake’s Jerusalem Los is walking upon mountains as he sings his song (J85:10, E244). He sees his Jerusalem in Albion’s ‘opacous Bosom’ ( J86:2). She is ‘Wing’d with six wings’ ( J86:1, E244; cf Isa 6:2; Rev 4:8) simultaneously urbane and feminine. This reminds us that in this work Blake used characters as representatives of psychological, political and religious characteristics. The apocalyptic images apply at the level of the individual and the social, in ways which differ from Revelation, though such application may be found in the history of interpretation of the text (Kovacs and Rowland 2004). Los sees her ‘forehead bright, Holiness to the Lord (Exod 28:36; 39:30) . . . Gates of pearl’ reflecting Eternity ( J86:4, E244). Her bosom is covered with a translucent version of Aaron’s breastplate (Exod 28:15–29) which symbolises the Tribes of Israel, the Holy Land, ‘the River of Life & Tree of Life’ and ‘the New Jerusalem descending out of heaven’ (Rev 21:2; 22:1–2; J86:18–19, E244). In Revelation, the city of Jerusalem descends from heaven to earth as a bride, without a temple, ‘for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it’ (Rev 21:22). When Jerusalem descends, in Plates 85 and 86, she shines with living stones. Like John’s city ‘of pure gold . . . garnished with all manner of precious stones’ (Rev 21:18–19), Jerusalem appears with ‘Wings of gold & silver’ ( J86:20). In Rev 21:24 the nations and kings come from throughout the earth to walk in glorious light. Blake’s Jerusalem, however, walks among all the nations and kings who come up to her, and she also promotes

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profitable and aesthetic trade ( J24:20, E169). So, Jerusalem represents characteristics which are typical not only of Britain but all nations. Related to the New Jerusalem which comes down from heaven, we find in Blake’s work reference to ‘the building of Golgonooza’ ( J5:24, E147; Fuller 1988: 181–4). The building of Golgonooza is linked with Revelation and Ezekiel (J12–13, E155–6), and Blake sees the actual buildings shot through with the best of human character: pity; well-wrought affections; love and kindness; mercy; forgiveness; honesty; well-wrought blandishments; well-contrived words; humility; devotion and thanksgiving ( J12:30–6, E155). Blake’s Golgonooza is a city like Ezekiel’s visionary temple city (Ezek 40–8). It has gates pointing to all points of the compass. It is closely linked with the heavenly Jerusalem, as Los sees the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem ‘wing’d with six wings’ ( J86:1), but, as we would expect of the way in which biblical and contemporary images overlap in Blake’s work, it is also closely identified with London ( J10:17; 53:15, E153 and 203). The Lamb appears frequently as the one from which Albion (symbolising the inhabitants of Britain) is alienated and the one who is evoked to bring salvation ( J24:59; 25:12, E170; 40 [45]:15, E187). Jerusalem, like Revelation itself, is a complex demonstration of the state of alienation and the tortuous path which needs to be taken to redemption, in which communion with the Lamb is crucial: ‘Recieve the Lamb of God to dwell/In Englands green & pleasant bowers’ ( J77, E233). Blake contrasts the Lamb with the ‘Abomination of desolation’ ( J7:70, E150; cf. Dan 9:27; Mark 13:14). The lamb offers an ever-present possibility for renewal, though the inhabitants of Britain are prevented from reaching that goal by their inability to recognise their true destiny ( J9:9, E152). In J27:6 (E171) the Lamb appears along with the bride (see Rev 21:2). No one eternally burns in fire. Embracing the Lamb is the way to forgiveness. The loving Lamb is ever present even in the furnaces of fire which are cathartic rather than punitive ( J31:5, E177). Much of Jerusalem happens in fire, something which is very evident in the plates. Los, the blacksmith, whose struggles for renewal are such a feature of the poem, depends on the catharsis of fire. It is a refiner’s fire (Malachi 3:2). Indeed, the journey to living water is through fire. At the very start of his annotations to Watson’s Apology Blake wrote: ‘The Beast and the Whore rule without controls’ (E611). As we shall see (p. 226 below), this is a theme in Blake’s images. The harlot/bride dualism is a familiar theme in the prophetic books of the Bible, including Revelation. ‘What is a Wife & what is a Harlot?’ the divine voice cries in Jerusalem’s Chapter Three

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( J57:8, E207), ‘Can they exist separate?’ – thereby questioning the neat binary opposites that are typical of the dualism of much Christian theology. Blake’s Jerusalem is called ‘Liberty’ ( J26, E171) and cannot be controlled by Albion or any of his sons. She tells Albion she cannot be his wife ( J45:44–5, E195). He and his sons condemn her as ‘the harlot daughter’ because of her ‘dishonourable forgiveness!’ (J18:12, E163). She is slandered because she opposes Albion’s warmongering, and banished and condemned. Albion prefers Jerusalem’s shadow, Vala, who is also called Rahab (cf. Joshua 2:1). Rahab-Vala is ‘the proud Virgin-Harlot, Mother of War’ ( J50:16, E200). In Jerusalem, making war is what makes a character a whore. Indeed, chaste Rahab/Vala is also called Babylon, melding with a seven-headed beast (Jerusalem 75i). It is her moral virtue which creates violence. Jerusalem, on the other hand, welcomes all in her inclusive embrace, and this is where Babylon/Vala too will ultimately find life ( J97–99, E256–8), when she is transformed in the forgiveness of sins to merge with Jerusalem. Then the harlot and the bride become one as they partake of the divine embrace. G. A. Rosso has demonstrated the importance of Rahab in the Blake corpus and shown how Blake uses this symbol via the apocalyptic imagery of Revelation in his critique of the religion of empire. Blake links Rahab and Babylon, probably because they are mentioned together in Psalm 87:4 (‘I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know me’) and as a result Rahab is associated with the dragon of Rev 12–13 and 17. The harlot’s (cf. Joshua 2:1) collusion (‘fornication’) with the kings of the earth (Rev 17:2) informs the way in which Blake uses Rahab as the agent of Jesus’ execution. Collusion of leading Judeans with the Roman colonial power accurately reflects both history and the gospel narrative. The hierarchy in Jerusalem depended for their hegemony on an alliance with the Roman colonial power. This was a way of maintaining their hegemony of the powerful Temple cult. In John 11:47–50 the preservation of the Temple is the reason for the hierarchy’s decision to arrest Jesus. Such collusion, and yet pretence at distance from impure pagans (e.g. Jn 18:28), is well brought out in the Gospel of John ( Jn 18:28–19:15). This reaches a climax in Jn 19:15 when the hierarchy exclaim ‘We have no king but Caesar’. In seeing Rahab as at once a sign of exclusiveness, a religion of sacrifice, and a collusion with the religion of empire, with its idolising of moral virtue and self-sacrifice, ‘religion hid in war’ (M37:43, E138; J75:20, E231), Blake seems to have encapsulated the complexity of a dehumanising politics and religion in his concept of ‘Rahab Babylon’. In one important respect Blake’s use of apocalyptic images differs significantly and decisively from that of Revelation. Blake will have none of the

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dualism of apocalypticism as a manifestation of the permanent state of things. Contraries may be present, but opposition in eternity, never. The Book of Revelation, for all of its hope for the ultimate overcoming of the separation between heaven and earth, still presupposes that there will be an eternal separation between that which is opposed to God and the world of the divine. Those outside the eternal city, or condemned to the lake of fire, are offered no respite. For Blake, all may bathe in the fountains of living water, whereas in John’s vision the New Jerusalem is offered only to those fortunate to be its inhabitants (Rev 22). John’s sinners burn in the lake of fire (Rev 20:15), while the white-robed Jerusalem is privileged to be invited to the wedding banquet (Rev 21:2). In Revelation there is no Blakean contrary in which the opposites generate the energy of understanding and change, only negation, the separation and ultimate alienation from God. This is not part of Blake’s understanding of judgement, which is not about condemnation but catharsis and the preparation for the ultimate restoration of both individual and cosmos as a whole. The ending of Jerusalem is as climactic as that of Revelation where the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven to earth. Blake’s version of God being ‘all in all’ (cf. 1 Cor 15:28) takes place when the trinity of Newton, Bacon and Locke take their places in the chariots of the Almighty ( J98:9, E257). The universality of Jerusalem’s address (‘To Jews, Deists, Christians and the Public’) demonstrates that Blake includes in his audience a group much wider than the church, for his vision concerns universal salvation and identification of the various obstacles in its way. The way of the Lamb emerged in his own labours and abode in LAMBeth ( J12:41, E155). Apocalypse, apocalyptic, and prophecy ‘The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ’, a phrase which Paul uses in Galatians, stands at the beginning of the last book of the Christian Bible. It is the only time the Greek word apokalypsis occurs in Revelation. Elsewhere the book is described as prophecy. Its picturesque imagery, its use of the symbolic as a lens through which to understand history and humanity, its emphasis on sight rather than hearing (Rev 5:5–6), and its mythological understanding of the way in which history worked are all familiar features of Blake’s own prophecy. In Revelation 4–5 the description of the scene in heaven, populated by angels and resounding to paeans of praise, is subverted by the presence of the slain lamb (p. 224 below). John expects a warrior-lion to open the sealed book and sees, surprisingly, a Lamb instead (Rev 5:6). This Lamb is also the apocalyptic victor and the bridegroom (Rev 6:1; 17:14; 19–22).

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Revelation is full of allusions to other books of the Bible, especially Daniel, Ezekiel and Isaiah, though John in his vision never explicitly quotes from these. This is to be expected in a visionary text in which the images are coming to the surface and jostling with one another without there being any systematic, or deliberate, attempt to understand how they are related. Even so we may detect certain features which link with the biblical origin. For both Blake and John of Patmos the beast is linked to the political realities of violence and oppression. For Blake it was a country at war and the attendant political repression. For John, inspired as he was by Daniel’s vision, it was the economic and ideological oppression carried out by local supporters of imperial Rome. John’s vision became a paradigmatic visionary text for Christians as well as an inspiration for radical political criticism. ‘Apocalypse’ and ‘apocalyptic’ are words which are particularly slippery in their use and meaning. An unexpected catastrophe, for example, is described as an ‘apocalyptic’ event, presumably because it resembles the terrible visions described in the Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation. Morton Paley rightly notes with approval Northrop Frye’s statement that ‘the Greek word for revelation, apocalypse, has the metaphorical sense of uncovering and taking the lid off ’ (Frye 1982: 44 quoted in Paley 1999: 2), but then goes on to point out that ‘apocalyptic characteristically brings the reader to the end of time, it is often linked with eschatology, the knowledge of the last things’ (Paley 1999: 3). This kind of interpretative move, in which the meaning of apocalypse as unveiling is immediately focused on eschatology, is typical. Apocalypse as the mode of knowing, and millennium, or eschatology, as the content of what is known are merged and need to be disentangled. The relationship between prophecy and apocalypse is a complex matter. Contrary to assumptions that are often made, one may question the neat distinction between them, which often resorts to H. H. Rowley’s oft-quoted dictum that prophecy foretold history which emerged from the present, whereas ‘apocalyptic’ is about a future breaking into the present (Rowley 1947: 38). The apocalyptic texts we now possess differ little in their understanding of history, and the location of God’s saving purposes, from the biblical prophetic texts. Where they do differ most from biblical prophecy is in the form in which revelation takes place and in their authorship. In the apocalyptic texts, the seers more often depend on visions, dreams with their interpretation, and angelic communications, to mediate the divine mysteries. In the light of this kind of distinction between prophecy and apocalyptic, Blake’s relationship to the apocalyptic tradition has been questioned. Thus, Steven Goldsmith considers that the problem with apocalypse is that Blake’s

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political millenarianism required a resistance to literary apocalypse which closes down rather than opens up debate (Goldsmith 1993: 139). Blake, according to Goldsmith, is opposed to the implicit authoritarianism of a revelatory text. The authoritative claim suggested by the allusion to Deuteronomy 4:2 in Revelation 22:18 does assert the book’s authority, but it is questionable whether the Book of Revelation is a text that ended prophecy as a living voice in Christianity, or for that matter was a kind of hermeneutical key to the canon as a whole (cf. Frye 1947: 360). It is after all the most allusive text in the Bible. The history of its interpretation indicates that it had the opposite effect. Pinning down its meaning has taxed two millennia of commentators and seers! Like many visionaries before, and after, him, Blake found in Revelation an inspiration for his own understanding of the world, a licence, therefore, for a prophecy for his own day (Kovacs and Rowland 2004). THE DISCERNMENT OF ETERNITY ‘THE PRODUCTIONS OF TIME’

IN

At the end of Ezekiel’s prophecy, the prophet is shown the buildings of a city, and is told to note what he sees in it and tell it to the people (Ezek 40:4). He has the opportunity to walk through its streets and describe what he sees. John, as an Ezekiel for his own day, and John’s contemporary, the writer of II Esdras, are similarly commanded to explore the beauty of the cities they are shown in their vision. In II Esdras 10:55, for example, Ezra is commanded to ‘go into the city and see the great buildings in all their splendour’. In Rev 21:9 and 15, John is shown the New Jerusalem, though, unlike Ezekiel or Ezra, he is not described as wandering round the city. It is Ezekiel’s exploration of the streets of his city which seems to inspire the poet-prophet as he wanders through the streets of London: I wander thro’ each charter’d street, Near where the charter’d Thames does flow. And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe. In every cry of every Man. In every Infants cry of fear, In every voice: in every ban The mind-forg’d manacles I hear

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How the Chimney-sweepers cry Every blackning Church appalls, And the hapless Soldiers sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls But most thro’ midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlots curse Blasts the new-born Infants tear And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse (‘London’, Songs of Experience, E26–7)

In Ezekiel 9 the prophet sees a man ‘clothed with linen, which had the writer’s inkhorn by his side’ (Ezek 9:3) setting ‘a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst’ of Jerusalem. These words inspire Blake the poet-prophet’s observation of what he sees and hears (what he ‘marks’) in the streets of his Jerusalem, London. But the marks here are not the marks for salvation, for, like the marks of the beast in Revelation 13:16, these marks consign the inhabitants to woes brought on by a society which outwardly may be upright but just beneath the surface displays a sorry tale of suffering and pain. It is the vocation of the poet-prophet to ‘mark’ the ‘marks’ of the beast and of the eschatological woes in his midst. Church and monarchy together participate in the life of misery for the hapless victims of the ‘chartered streets’ of economic change which was late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century London (Thompson 1993: 179–94). The first stanza of this poem shows us Blake actualising biblical texts. Words and images, especially from Blake’s favourite prophet, Ezekiel, are an inspiration to Blake the poet-prophet, convinced as he is that he acts in continuity in his own time and place with the spirit of prophecy which fired Ezekiel and John. In the two ‘Holy Thursday’ poems from Songs of Innocence and of Experience we have contrasting perspectives on the situation in England. Here the prophetic insight is used to interpret an apparently festive event and see its deeper meaning. Benjamin Heath Malkin (1806) wrote of the debt to Revelation in the ‘Innocence’ version of ‘Holy Thursday’: ‘The book of Revelation, which may well be supposed to engross much of Mr. Blake’s study, seems to have directed him . . .’ (Bentley 2004: 567).

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‘Holy Thursday’, Innocence

‘Holy Thursday’, Experience

Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean The children walking two & two in red & blue & green Grey headed beadles walkd before with wands as white as snow Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow

Is this a holy thing to see, In a rich and fruitful land, Babes reducd to misery, Fed with cold and usurous hand ?

O what a multitude they seemd these flowers of London town Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands

Is that trembling cry a song ? Can it be a song of joy ? And so many children poor ? It is a land of poverty ! And their sun does never shine. And their fields are bleak & bare. And their ways are fill’d with thorns. It is eternal winter there.

Now like a mighty wind For where-e’er the sun they raise to heaven the voice of song does shine, Or like harmonious thunderings And where-e’er the rain the seats of heaven among does fall : Beneath them sit the aged men wise Babe can never hunger guardians of the poor there, Then cherish pity, Nor poverty the mind appall. lest you drive an angel from your door (Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Plates 19 and 33, E13 and 19) In these poems (Glen 1983: 120–9, 170–5) one can see contrasts which are a feature of biblical apocalyptic literature: light and darkness, heaven and earth, the dominant and the subordinate, all of which Blake uses as a gateway to further understanding. Such ‘contraries’ jolt readers from complacency into seeing the reality of death, as well as the glimmer of hope that is to be found in the midst of death and despair. The wider apocalyptic background is more evident in an earlier draft of the Innocence version, in which the children are seen as angels joining with the

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heavenly host (Glen 1983: 126 n. 28, E850). The poet-prophet meditates upon a particular social event in eighteenth-century England. There is the focus on a moment, what Blake calls a ‘minute particular’, when the poet may pierce behind appearances to reveal, in apocalyptic fashion, inner reality and the contrasting emotions and attitudes which it engenders. The juxtaposition of the two similarly titled poems parallels the stark contrast in Revelation 6–7. In Revelation 6 death and pestilence stalk the earth, while in Revelation 7 the followers of the Lamb exult in their salvation. The children who raise their voice in praise are a small sample of that great multitude of victims who have ‘washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb’. The grey headed beadles (Revelation’s elders, e.g. Rev 7:13 cf 4:4) are given a subordinate position to the children (‘beneath them sit the aged men’). The children of the ‘Holy Thursday’ poem are not merely passive recipients of the charity of the wealthy. The poet indicates their peculiar quality in the words ‘with radiance all their own’ and in the ‘mighty wind’ of their song, echoing Revelation 19:6. Their praise is a moment of assertion, when, in Blake’s perspective on the event, the children come to dominate the proceedings. At the end of the evocation of thanksgiving and charity in the Songs of Innocence version, there is a darker dimension to the light of the image and the heart-warming scene in the words ‘Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door’. Apocalypse lurks, like the Son of Man, outside, knocking at the door of the Laodicean church in Revelation 3:20, disturbing the wisdom, order and life of comfortable London. In the Songs of Experience version, forbidding and gloomy as its colouring is, there emerges a contrast with the innocent multitude in ‘Paul’s’ cathedral. The marginal designs in the Experience version show a woman contemplating a dead child and the comfort offered to children by a fearful woman. There is a connection with the apocalyptic doom set forth in Blake’s prophecy Europe, as the dead child and the woman are seen in both the marginal illuminations and ‘Europe’ Plate 8(9) (Tolley 1970). Lower down, to the right of the poem in Songs of Experience, there is the image of a child cuddling up to the woman, reminiscent of the scene of desolation in the frontispiece of Blake’s America a Prophecy (Copy O, 1793/1821). This image suggests the way in which the fearsome apocalyptic images pervade Blake’s prophetic imagination, and it encapsulates the themes of this chapter. In it Blake appears to draw together apocalyptic images from Revelation 12 and 20 in order to produce a scene in which the dormant threat from a shackled beast (Rev 20:2) and the devastation resulting, apparently, from the effects of war, particularly as

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it affects women and children, merge in this bleak and disquieting picture. The huge temple-like building, paralleling the monoliths in the Job engravings, reminds the viewer of the way in which religion has been the terrible accomplice of war and destruction (cf. M37:43, E138; J75:20, E231; J89:53, E249). The shackled beast, with the limbs of a man, two ringlets of hair like horns (cf. Rev 13:11) and eyes like those of a bird, echoes Revelation 20:3, 7, suggesting a respite from the situation of war. Blake elsewhere describes 1798 as a time when ‘the Beast and Whore rule without controls’. The temporarily restrained beast still threatens the woman and her children, with no man in sight, just as the dragon does in Rev 12:4: ‘and the dragon stood before the woman’. The gigantic demon overshadows a woman and a child, naked and overawed. Likewise, the forbidding character of the image in the Experience poem contrasts with the last stanza’s words ‘Babe can never hunger there’ which echo the more hopeful Revelation 7:16 (‘they will hunger no more’, Glen 1983: 173). That mixture of struggle and hope also pervades the stanzas from the ‘Preface to Milton’ with which this chapter began and which typifies Blake’s work to ‘rouze the faculties to act’ and to cleanse the doors of perception so that people may know what makes for their peace (cf. Luke 19:44).

7

William Blake and the radical interpretation of the Bible Gerrard Winstanley, Abiezer Coppe, Ralph Cudworth, and Hans Denck The Bible or Peculiar Word of God, Exclusive of Conscience or the Word of God Universal, is that Abomination, which, like the Jewish ceremonies, is for ever removed & hence forth every man may converse with God & be a King & Priest in his own house. (William Blake, ‘Annotations to Watson’s Apology’, E615) . . . learne to put a difference between the Report, and the thing Reported of. The spirit that made flesh, is he that is reported of. The writings and words of the Saints is the report. (Gerrard Winstanley, Truth Lifting up its Head, Sabine 1941:124; CHL i.431) And all Forms, appearances, Types, Signs, Shadows, Flesh, do, and shall melt away (with fervent heat) into power, reality, Truth, the thing signified, Substance, Spirit. (Abiezer Coppe, Some Sweet Sips, Smith 1983: 71) He is a true Christian indeed, not he that is only book-taught, but he that is Godtaught. . . . Words and syllables which are but dead things, cannot possibly convey the living notions of heavenly truths to us. (Ralph Cudworth 1647) I read it [Scripture] and find in [it] particular testimony, which powerfully confirms just that which thus compels me is Christ whom Scripture testifies to be the Son of the Most High. (Hans Denck, Bekenntnis für den Rat zu Nürnberg, 57, Denck 1955: 21) We must labour to see, in all the words of God, that the truth, and the Word of God itself, is hid and coucht under mighty parables, for without a parable he spake nothing unto them. ( John Everard, Gospel-Treasures, 1653: 590)

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If I had no other book than the only book which I am myself so I have books enough. The whole Bible lies in me if I have Christ’s spirit. (Remainder of the books written by Jacob Boehme, ‘Apol. Tilcken’ 298, quoted in Fischer 2004:57) . . . everything is to be finally referred to the spirit and the unwritten word. John Milton, On Christian Doctrine, Book 1 (Porter 1964:174)

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Radicalism has always been part of the rich fabric of Christianity. Throughout Christian history, there have been writings which have offered searching critiques of the political order, have promoted change, and, most important of all, advocated active engagement for change rather than merely writing about it. Whatever else one means by ‘radical’ (Bradstock and Rowland 2002; Rix 2007), there is an appeal to the roots, and a critique of a religion which places institutions and rituals above the needs of people (echoing Matthew 5:23–4). Other key characteristics of Christian radicalism would include the inspiration of the Spirit in discerning the divine will, along with recourse to visions and experience, all of which put the Bible and church in second place. In the light of this the prophets, Jesus, Paul and John the seer offer paradigmatic ‘roots’ in the Bible which confirm the various kinds of experience. Also important is human participation in bringing about New Age Kingdom of God on earth, which is not left to some kind of miraculous intervention. Likewise human agency is crucial in ‘exalting the humble and meek’. The importance of the radical background of Blake’s biblical hermeneutic has long been recognised and has never been more succinctly put than by Ronald Paulson: While establishment Christianity, founded on the Bible of the Church Fathers, was content with an ordered status quo in this life, revolutionary Christianity, which harked back to the ‘true’ reading of the New Testament – called for change. ‘How long, O Lord, how long!’ was their cry, and their expectation was the reign of Christ upon this earth in the near future. They stood for, or easily were made to stand for, the desire for an imminent and total overthrow of the existing order and the substitution of a ‘new heaven and a new earth’ in which would dwell ‘righteousness’. Sometimes, as with the sixteenth-century Thomas

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Münzer and the seventeenth-century radical protestants in England, the result had been directly political and bloody. More often it remained only religious and involved a patient waiting for divine intervention. But the desire was always discernible to such conservatives as Burke; and it was always lurking in the minds of such radicals as Blake – to be entertained or acted upon. (Paulson 1982: 116)

It is this background which forms the hermeneutical characteristics of the radical mind-set, and the subject-matter of this chapter. In the quotation from Blake’s ‘Annotations to Watson’s Apology’ we note the way he exalts ‘the Word of God Universal’ over the ‘Peculiar Word of God’. The latter is the Bible; the former is the presence of the Divine Word, the Eternal Christ, throughout the world, to which the ‘peculiar Word’ of the Bible might bear witness, although the two kinds of Word are distinct. This distinction is an important part of Christian hermeneutic of the Bible, and it is crucial for the wider context of biblical interpretation of which William Blake was a part. The quotation from the writings of Gerrard Winstanley is similar. In it we have the emphasis on human experience of God in the present resonating with the testimony to that experience in the biblical writings. It is a hermeneutic which had become deeply rooted in English dissent (Thompson 1993) and which one may find equally in the Quakers, in women writers such as Jane Lead, Mary Astell and M. Marsin, as well as in some forms of spiritual Anabaptism such as in the writings of Hans Denck, and earlier in the so-called ‘heresy of the free spirit’ (Lerner 1972; Baumann 1991; Apetrei 2007 and 2010; Porter 1964).1 What counts is the experience of the interpreter which validates, by its resonance with the Bible, the words contained therein. In The Everlasting Gospel Blake puts on the lips of his Sir Isaac Newton the charge against Jesus of claiming inspiration by ‘the Indwelling of the Holy Ghost’, which is described as ‘Pride & vanity of Imagination That disdains to follow this Worlds Fashion’ (The Everlasting Gospel, E519). ‘Blake is a Holy Ghost Christian, an “enthusiast”, like Gerrard Winstanley; the only person of the Trinity that he cares about much is the third person, the spirit of Christ that we bear in us, which he calls the Imagination’ (Ferber 1985: 70). Blake stands in the long tradition going right back to Joachim of Fiore, whose eschatology prioritises the Age of the Spirit, ‘the Eternal Gospel’, which is the culmination of the divine promises, when God is all in all (to quote a Pauline phrase, cf. 1 Cor 15:28; Ephes 4:5–6), or God is with us (Matthew 1:23; cf. Isaiah 7:14.). The phrase ‘the everlasting gospel’ (in fact an echo of Revelation 14:6: ‘And I saw

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another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people’) is a reminder of an even older tradition, reaching back to the medieval period and the apocalyptic hermeneutics which the writings of Joachim of Fiore set in train, not least the ‘third age’ of the Spirit, which transcended the earlier dispensations (Morton 1958; Rix 2007; McGinn 1985). In ‘The Breaking of the Day of God’ 6 (CHL i.163), for example, Winstanley positions his age as between the second and third woes of Revelation 11 and ‘under the sound of the sixth Angel’, who pronounces the death of the Beast, echoing the Joachite preoccupation with the sixth, penultimate, period. The radicals understood better than the orthodox that the life of the Spirit, chaotic and revolutionary as it was, represented a central strand of the New Testament (and for that matter the prophetic inspiration of parts of the Old Testament too), for they believed it was at the very heart of what it meant to share in the divine life. They were committed to a lived action rather than theological concepts. ‘Action is the life of all’ is the manifestation of the divine: ‘some will say, Is not God alone the Prolific? I answer, God only Acts & Is, in existing beings or men’ (MHH16, E40). Knowing God means recognising God in one’s fellow human beings: It is the God in all that is our companion & friend, for our God himself says, you are my brother, my sister & my mother [Mark 3:33–4] & St John. Whoso dwelleth in love dwelleth in God & God in him [1 John 4:16] . . . for our Lord is the word of God & every thing on earth is the word of God & in its essence is God. (‘Annotations to J. C. Lavater’s Aphorisms on Man’, E599, quoted in Ferber 1985: 70)2

The concern of this chapter is not to establish that Blake was part of a radical sub-culture (Mee 1992), so much as to consider the affinities in hermeneutical approach that he had with some of his predecessors. What appears to be an explicit borrowing on the part of a writer is made so unconsciously that the impression is given of the Spirit moving afresh in each generation. E. P. Thompson recognises the difficulty of tracing ‘influence’: ‘what we should be looking for is a characteristic rhetoric and the trope of the everlasting gospel’ (Thompson 1993: 24 n.3; Ferber 1985: 31; Makdisi 2003; and on the reception of radicalism, Hessayon 2006–7). Anthony Nuttall suggests that ‘the more one reads, the clearer it becomes that the tracing of close verbal connections is in a way beside the point, that we are dealing with a philosophia perennis or persistent

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body of live thought, maintained both by writing and by enthusiastic talk continuously through the centuries. These things never die’ (Nuttall 1998: 218). Similarly, Northrop Frye puts it well when he writes ‘Blake is the sort of writer who may show startling resemblances to someone he had not read. . . . In the study of Blake, it is the analogue that is important, not the source (my italics)’ (Frye 1948: 12). So, the value of writings from the radical tradition lies in their usefulness as a heuristic device to understand Blake’s writings better. E. P. Thompson sought to relate Blake to a radical, dissenting tradition rather than to gnosticism, Platonism, or even the predecessors whom Blake cites in his own work – Milton, Swedenborg, Boehme (Thompson 1993; similarly Hayes 1979; Smith 1989: 185–226, especially 208; Fischer 2004; on Boehme and the spiritualist tradition in protestant hermeneutics, O’Regan 2002: 87–101). The tradition of radical religion in England, which made such an impact on midseventeenth century religious and political life, according to Thompson, remained a sub-culture in English life thereafter (Morton 1958). It is a position which has been more widely canvassed in studies of Blake’s antecedents (Makdisi 2003; Ferber 1985; Nuttall 1998: 192–224). Four writers in particular are to be considered in this chapter: Gerrard Winstanley (a link with Blake is noted by Ferber 1985: 70; Morton 1958; Makdisi 2003: 288–309; Rix 2007: 25–32), Hans Denck, Ralph Cudworth and Abiezer Coppe, though the net could be spread much wider. Translation of continental radical writings proceeded apace in the seventeenth-century. Thus John Everard (born c. 1575), a leading figure in early seventeenth-century Stuart religion, fell foul of the religious authorities because of his beliefs. The details of his life and work (Como 2004: 219–28) are less important than the evidence his writing offers of his affinity with the radical ideas and hermeneutic discussed in this chapter. Everard translated and disseminated key continental ideas of Familists, texts like the Theologia Germanica and in part the ideas of Hans Denck and Sebastian Franck (Smith 1989: 107–184; Poole 2005: 62–76). Echoes of ideas such as we find in the writing of Sebastian Franck, whose theology has many affinities with that of Denck, may have been taken up by Winstanley (Smith 1989: 237–9).3 Like his later contemporary Ralph Cudworth, whose allegorical interpretation is mentioned later in this chapter, his approach to biblical hermeneutics was based on the words of scripture/Word of God separation (as the quotation at the beginning of this chapter indicates) and the espousal of allegory. The Bible, both Old and New Testaments, became testimony to the experience of the writers, the truth of which came alive in the spiritual journey of the enlightened reader

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(Como 2004: 219–65; Smith 1989: 134–5, 291; Nuttall 1998: 208–11; Makdisi 2003: 291–3; Hawes 1996). It is an engagement with the Bible which is not cut off from the existential commitments and concerns of the interpreters, in which the Scriptures, therefore, become a stimulus for discernment of the divine way in the present. What counts is not so much what the text meant, but what import these words may now have in the circumstances of the present. G E R R A R D W I N S T A N L E Y (1609–1676): ‘ACTION IS THE LIFE OF ALL’ Our knowledge of Gerrard Winstanley’s life is very sketchy, confined to the period from April 1649 to March 1650 when, as a member of the Digger commune he helped establish in Surrey, he was digging the common land as part of the ‘common treasury’ for all humanity. Winstanley’s career and writing was closely bound up with the commune (CHL i.25–41),4 whose major advocate he became before the local and national political authorities. The venture started a few weeks after the execution of Charles I, when the overthrow of the earthly monarchy seemed to presage the ‘Fifth Monarchy of King Jesus’ (cf. Daniel 2:44–5). Winstanley writes of the present as a time when the reordering of society in line with God’s purpose is imminent (Sabine 1941: 170, cf. 153, 184, 410; CHL i.493, 477, ii.245). Winstanley was prompted by a revelation that he and his companions should act by digging the common land, thus claiming what they regarded as their rightful inheritance (True Levellers Standard, Sabine 1941: 260–2; CHL ii.13–17). Winstanley’s words epitomise this perspective: ‘words and writings were all nothing, and must die, for action is the life of all, and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing’.5 Winstanley and a few others moved to St George’s Hill, on 1 April 1649, and their number grew to about forty (there appear to have been similar experiments taking place at roughly the same time elsewhere). Their action provoked hostility from local landowners and complaints to the Council of State. They were on St George’s Hill for only a short time before moving to the Little Heath, Cobham, where they were for nearly a year before being chased off by the local cleric who was lord of the manor, and some of his manorial tenants in the spring of 1650. Winstanley’s burst of writing is probably confined to a period of less than five years. His last extant words are a despairing and tragic lament about the apparent failure of his hopes:

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Here is the righteous Law, Man, wilt thou it maintain? It may be, is, as hath still, in the world been slain. Truth appears in Light, Falshood rules in Power; To see these things to be, is cause of grief each hour. Knowledge, why didst thou come, to wound, and not to cure? I sent not for thee, thou didst me inlure. Where knowledge does increase, there sorrows multiply, To see the great deceit which in the World doth lie. Man saying one thing now, unsaying it anon, Breaking all’s Engagements, when deeds for him are done. O power where art thou, that must mend things amiss? Come change the heart of Man, and make him truth to kiss; O death where art thou? Wilt thou not tidings send? I fear thee not, thou art my loving friend. Come take this body, and scatter it in the Four, That I may dwell in One, and rest in peace once more. (Law of Freedom in a Platform, Sabine 1941: 600; CHL ii.379)

Fundamental to the communal experiment of the Diggers was the belief that the earth was a common treasury, and thus the whole concept of ownership of land as private property conflicted with this fundamental right. Winstanley was concerned to expose the way in which the elevation of private property to a universal human good reflected a fundamental characteristic of humanity after the Fall of Adam. Private property, he argued, was the curse of Adam, the consequence of the acting out of his covetousness. Those who act out their desires seek to maintain the fruits of their actions by hanging on to what they possess by oppression, murder or theft. This rule of the Serpent is supported by a professional ministry; the kingly power; the judiciary; and the buying and selling of the earth. Winstanley’s engagement with the Bible is well exemplified by The New Law of Righteousness (164; CHL i.472–568). There are several key hermeneutical characteristics which are central to his work: 1. the importance of ‘experiment’, and with it the protest against the view that visions and revelations are over (Truth Lifting up its Head, Sabine 1941: 100; CHL i.410); 2. the human person being a site of a struggle between flesh and spirit; and, 3. the ‘original’ sin being the acquisitive demand for that which the eye sees (covetousness), as a consequence of which attention to the promptings of

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the spirit within is blocked as ‘propriety’ is established and what is possessed becomes ‘mine’ rather than ‘thine’, to the exclusion of others. Winstanley contrasts two spirits at work in the human person, and uses 1 Corinthians 2:10–16, the locus classicus concerning the inner promptings of the Spirit, as a means of discerning the divine will, without any resort to any external authority: this second man is the spiritual man, that judges all things according to the law of equity and reason, in moderation and love to all, he is not a talker but an actor of Righteousness. (The biblical reference ‘Cor 2:15’ is explicitly cited by Winstanley, Sabine 1941: 179; CHL i.502)

The spirit which anointed Jesus will indwell all people, so that the king of righteousness and peace will rule in all. This Winstanley links with the fulfilment of Jeremiah 31:34. The ‘new law of righteousness’ is not the letter of the commandments but the Spirit (Saints Paradice, Sabine 1941: 94; New Law, idem 161; CHL i.313, 362, 484; and on the importance of Jer 31:31–3, Altizer 1967: 201). Anyone with a meek spirit will know the Christ within, whatever the orthodoxy of their doctrine: For a meek spirit bears the name ( Jesus) and a man filled with the power of God, or a man taken up into God, to become one in spirit within; bears the name (Christ) and therefore you are not saved by believing; there was such a man, that lived, and died at Jerusalem, for though you believe there was such a man, yet that is not saving faith to you, till you feel the power of a meek spirit come into you, and reign King, and tread all your envy, frowardnesse, and bitternesse of spirit under foot. (Saints Paradice, VI; CHL i.357)

Two opposing powers are at work in humankind from the beginning of creation. There was no period of innocence, therefore, though there is a ‘fall’, a moment of acted covetousness ending in ‘propriety’, when one power gets the upper hand in the behaviour of the human person, and oppression comes about when covetousness is acted out. This only ceases by the universal spreading of divine power, not by pulling the tyrannical power out of others’ hands. It is only by ensuring that the universal power of righteous laws is written in hearts, that the phrase ‘Mine and

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Thine shall be swallowed up in the law of righteous actions one to another’ (New Law, Sabine 1941:161; CHL i.506). Winstanley’s interpretation of Genesis 3 became the cornerstone of his political theology.6 His interpretation of this key chapter in Christian theology focuses less on disobedience than on the inclination to covetousness (Gen 3:6: ‘And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise’ . . .) which is acted out (‘she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat’), and on the consequent ongoing demand for possession of that which is deemed one’s own property maintained by violence (cf. Genesis 4). This interpretation exhibits a distinctive and creative engagement with the subject-matter of the text of Genesis rather than an arbitrary use of the text for his own political ends. If one side of the human person is covetousness, the attitude expressed in the phrase ‘mine and thine’, the other side of the human person is the word of life, Christ, the restoring spirit which is to be found within a person: ‘The Kingdom of heaven (which is) Christ is within you’. It is only with the restoration and the deliverance from the curse of preoccupation with possessing external objects that other creatures and the earth will be restored. It is a time when every one will know the Law; and every one shall obey the Law, for it shall be written in every one’s heart (cf. Jer 31:31–3; New Law, Sabine 1941: 162; CHL i.484). The Bible offers a confirmation of the witness to the indwelling Christ. Scripture is the experience of ‘Christ in the letter’, written by the apostles. This may be accessed by the experience of the Spirit by later readers whose circumstances and status are similar to those of the first writers who also were inspired by the Spirit. The task is to discern the spiritual truth lying under the ‘experimental words’ of the writers who set forth the actions of God in different circumstances. That is, the experience of the apostles and contemporary experience together offer a mutually reinforcing confirmation of the authenticity of both as the spirit works within, for ‘the spiritual man judges all things’ (Truth Lifting up its Head, Sabine 1941: 128; CHL i.435; cf. 1 Cor 2:15). Although Winstanley stresses the importance of finding confirmation of the indwelling Christ in the words of the Bible, he is willing to cite texts as an authority, to prove a doctrinal or ethical point. Thus reference to Acts 4:32 is sometimes made to underline the scriptural basis of his view that the earth is a common treasury (Sabine 1941: 184, 198, 201; CHL i.506–7, 520–1, 523–4), though the Acts passage resonates with, and is endorsed by, Winstanley’s visionary experience (Sabine 1941: 261; CHL ii.14–15). There is a suspicion of learning for its own sake and the scriptures as an object of study. Instead, what is important is the Spirit within: ‘he that speaks from the

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original light within can truly say, I know what I say and I know whom I worship’ (Sabine 1941: 224; CHL i.548). It is not book-learning that counts, but what one has received, whether by experience or revelation (cf. Coppe’s writing discussed in Smith 1989: 291; Makdisi 2003: 291–3; Nuttall 1998: 208–11; Hawes 1996: 32–7, 68–91). All people everywhere, equally, have access to the divine spirit within, and those who assert their authority to tell others the meaning of Scripture miss the fact that the divine spirit enables understanding of God. The Bible is to be regarded as an ancient testimony to the experiences of the apostles and prophets, rather than the word of Christ itself which indwells all people. In writing thus Winstanley sides with Quaker positions over against those of the emerging Baptist position on the Bible (Underwood 1997: 20–33). Winstanley challenged the scholarly attempt to create distance between text and reader (Sabine 1941: 224). Instead, he stressed the centrality of ‘experimental knowledge’, just as Blake was to do in All Religions are One, The Argument: ‘As the true method of knowledge is experiment, the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which experiences. This faculty I treat of’ (E1). Blake immediately explains that the faculty he has in mind differs from that of the empiricists. It is ‘the Poetic Genius’, or ‘Spirit of Prophecy’ and hence inspiration. Winstanley anticipates Blake in challenging the resort to ‘memory’ and invokes the power of inspiration through the king of righteousness within: The sight of the King of glory within, lies not in the strength of memory, calling to mind what a man hath read and heard, being able by a human capacity to join things together into a method; & through the power of free utterance, to hold it forth before others, as the fashion of Students are in their Sermon work; which a plough man that was never bred in their Universities may do as much; nay, they do more in this kind (as experience shows us) than they that take tithes to tell a story. But the sight of the King within, lies in the beholding of light arising up from an inward power of feeling experience, filling the soul with the glory of the Law of Righteousness, which doth not vanish like the taking in of words and comfort from the mouth of a hearsay Preacher, or strength of memory. (New Law of Righteousness, Sabine 1941: 233; CHL i.557)

Throughout his writing Winstanley criticises preoccupation with biblical texts as relating past history only and gets the reader to identify with the biblical text as a description of the spiritual struggle within. Thus, Adam and Eve are in every man and woman, and the longing for ‘creature objects’, and the exercise of

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power which tyrannises over others in order to maintain this hold is a universal human experience (New Law, Sabine 1941:158; CHL i.481).7 The scriptures were written by the hand of ordinary people: ‘When Christ sent out his disciples to preach he said, that which thou have heard and seen, go preach; and saith Paul, we cannot but so speak the things which we have heard and seen from the Father’. In contrast, Winstanley alleges, the university public ministry runs before he be sent; they take up another man’s message, and carries abroad other men’s words, or studies or imagines a meaning; and this is their ministry. (Fire in the Bush, Sabine 1941: 474; CHL ii.200)

What is required is to preach the truth, purely and experimentally. It is by so doing that one may reflect the ‘Scriptures of the Bible which were written by the experimental hand of shepherds, husbandmen, fishermen and such inferior men of the world’ (Fire in the Bush, Sabine 1941: 474; CHL ii.199). These great ones are too stately houses for Christ to dwell in; he takes up his abode in a manger, Inn, and amongst the poor in spirit, and despised ones of the earth. (Fire in the Bush, Sabine 1941: 474; CHL ii.199)

The biblical writings have been subject to dark interpretation and glosses of the university ‘learned ones’. Consequently, ‘the true pen-men in whom the Spirit dwells, are told not to meddle with spiritual things’ because they are ‘Mecanicks’, that is, those inspired by the Spirit (Sabine 1941: 475; CHL ii.200). ‘And so by covetous policy, in opposition to the righteous spirit, they engross other men’s experimental spiritual teachings to themselves, as if it were their own, by university or school learning succession, Pope-like. Nay just the Pope’ (Sabine 1941: 475; CHL ii.201). In The Saints Paradice Winstanley stresses the importance of the teacher in every human person and the centrality of ‘experimental knowledge’. In his autobiographical account of the importance of ‘experimental’ religion he echoes the words of Job 42:5, which, as we have seen, were an important hermeneutical key for Blake’s understanding of the Book of Job: I my self have known nothing but what I received by tradition from the mouths and pen of others: I worshipped a God, but I neither knew who he was nor where

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he was . . . . I spoke of the name of God, and Lord, and Christ, but I knew not this Lord, God, and Christ; I prayed to a God, but I knew not where he was, nor what he was, and so walking by imagination, I worshipped that devill, and called him God; by reason whereof my comforts were often shaken to pieces, and at last it was shewed to me, That while I builded upon any words or writings of other men, or while I looked after a God without me, I did but build upon the sand, and as yet I knew not the Rock. (The Saints Paradice, 1648; CHL i.313–14; cf. i. 359: ‘he that looks for a God without himself, and worships God at a distance, he worships he knows not what, but is led away, and deceived by the imaginations of his own heart, which is Beelzebub the great Devill’)

As in the later Blake writings from Milton onwards, in The Saints Paradice Winstanley sees the Devil as the overwhelming power in the human person, ‘taking peace from him’: But this Devil is not a middle power, distinct from God, between God and the creature, and so waits as Gaoler to do his Office when the Judge condemns the sinner, as some say, and as I thought; but it is the power of proud flesh, and the power of the pure spirit mixing together, not as friends, but enemies, opposing each other, and so killing the weaker party, the creature, and taking peace from him. And though God suffer the Devil to act, and gives him a power sometimes over the creature, yet God doth suffer it, not to ruin his creature man, but to ruin the Devil, to bruise that serpents head, and to reconcile the creature to himself, and so to raise him up to enjoy the life of God, that is dead under the power of the Devil. (The Saints Paradice, III; CHL i.333)

Winstanley cites the example of Job as one whom God allowed Satan to test. In this whole process, however, God himself is the sufferer as Job learns how to worship God experimentally (CHL i.336). Job’s ‘terrours in the night’ are mentioned as a way in which the ‘imprisoned creature’ is stirred from spiritual slumber (CHL i.345). The result means coming to ‘know you have a teacher within your selves (which is the Spirit) . . . so that you shall not need to run after men for instruction’ (CHL i.314). The opening of The Saints Paradice is full of echoes of 1 Cor 2:10–16, though it is Jeremiah 31:34 and 1 John 2:27 that are explicitly quoted on the title page (CHL i.313). As a result there needs to be discernment between the two spirits in the human person (CHL i.318; cf. p. 79 above). Winstanley echoes Blake’s reading of the Book of Job in the contrast between ‘memory’ and

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‘inspiration’. He argues that Satan functions there not as a power distinct from God but as the one who exercises a limited power, by means of which God tries Job and makes him more faithful and able ‘to worship [God] more experimentally’ so that Job’s days are his ‘best days’ (Saints Paradice, CHL i.336, 354). Winstanley criticises clergy who interpreted ‘the poor and meek shall inherit the earth’ as ‘inward satisfaction’. Instead, ‘This great Leveller, Christ our King of righteousness in us, shall cause men to beat their swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, and nations shall learn war no more, and every one shall delight to let each other enjoy the pleasures of the earth, and shall hold each other no more in bondage’ (Sabine 1941: 391; CHL ii.145). He repudiates the resort of violence by some of his political allies and enjoins people to make ‘peace with the cavaliers’ on the basis of ‘love of enemies’ and The Golden Rule: ‘do to them as you would have had them done to you if they had conquered you’: For my part I was always against the cavaliers’ cause, yet their persons are part of the Creation as well as you, and many of them may enter into peace before some of you scoffing Ishmaelites; I am sure you act contrary to the Scripture which bids you Love your enemies, and doe as you would be done by. . . . Come, make peace with the Cavaliers your enemies, and let the oppressed go free, and let them have a livelihood, and love your enemies, and doe to them, as you would have had them done to you if they had conquered you: Well, let them go in peace, and let love wear the Crown. . . . This powerfull Saviour will not set up his Kingdom nor rule his Creation with sword and fighting, as some think and fear, for he hath declared to you long since, that they that take the sword to save themselves shall perish with the sword. . . . This great Leveller, Christ our King of righteousness in us, shall cause men to beat their swords into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks, and nations shall learn war no more, and every one shall delight to let each other enjoy the pleasures of the earth, and shall hold each other no more in bondage. (New Years Gift, Sabine 1941: 389; CHL ii.143–5)

Winstanley’s understanding of the struggle within the individual and in society at large is pervaded with the apocalyptic imagery of the Book of Revelation. This is seen in his early tract, The Breaking of the Day of God. It is an extended commentary on the two witnesses of Revelation 11, a subject of intense debate in the history of interpretation of that chapter (CHL i.101–254; Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 126–30). Winstanley suggests that the two witnesses are Jesus and the Saints, so that the whole history of ‘witness’ down the centuries, against the power of the beast, is all part of the same task of ‘bruising the serpent’s head’.

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Such witnesses are those who can prove their testimony not from books but from their own experienced knowledge (Sabine 1941: 88; CHL i.116). The mystery of the coming of age of righteousness means not life after death, but ‘this new heaven and earth’ that has already begun to appear (Sabine 1941: 170; CHL i.493). Universal freedom has never filled the earth but has been foretold by prophets (Sabine 1941: 184; CHL i.507). When this happens it will be a new heaven and earth. The problem is that covetous flesh imagines God to be in some particular place of glory, beyond the skies (Saints Paradice, Sabine 1941: 93; CHL i.314–15). The great day of judgement means the Righteous Judge sitting upon the throne in every man and woman (Sabine 1941:183, cf. 226; CHL i.506, cf. i.550). Winstanley believed that the future age promised in the Bible was already being inaugurated, both in the individual and in society at large, but this ‘age’ could be manifested in the individual and the spiritual sphere rather than the political, much as had happened in Familist texts of the sixteenth century (Marsh 1994: 256–60; Smith 1989: 144–84, especially 157–62, 180). ‘Heaven within himself’ is not achieved without a struggle within the human soul against the negative power of imagination. This power is the ‘god which generally everyone worships and owns’ (Fire in the Bush, Sabine 1941: 456; CHL ii.182) and leads to envy, censure and destruction of the weak by the powerful. ‘Under this power of Imagination, the whole government of the world amongst the sons of men is built’, because it is the exercise of covetousness in the heart and intellect (Sabine 1941: 455–56; CHL ii.181–2). Redemption is the gradual overcoming of the exercise of this power. Winstanley describes the struggle utilising to the full the dualistic language of apocalypticism: These two powers are Michael and the Dragon, and this battle is fought in heaven, (that is, in mankind, in the garden of Eden), where God principally resolves to set up his throne of righteous government, it is not fought in the spirit of Beasts; but in Heaven in the spirit of Mankind, who is the Lord. And this battle in our age of the world, grows hotter and sharper than formerly; for we are under the dividing of times, which is the last period of the Beasts reign; And he will strive hardest now’. (Fire in the Bush, Sabine 1941: 457; CHL ii.182)

His view of individual transformation runs in tandem with his conviction about the end of oppression in society. Christ rising means the conquest of fourfold power: imaginary teaching power called hearsay; imaginary kingly power; imaginary judicature; buying and selling of the earth, which Christ will destroy by the

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word of his mouth. These are then interpreted with the four beasts of Daniel 7. Winstanley uses the imagery of Daniel and the New Testament Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation, to interpret the oppressive behaviour of the wielders of political and economic power of his day. In particular, he regarded the prevalence of private property as typifying the rule of the Beast, as prophesied in Revelation and the Book of Daniel. Like John the visionary, Winstanley’s interpretation of Daniel’s vision of the beasts arising out of the sea becomes a vehicle of a powerful political critique of the contemporary polity. As in Revelation 13, the Danielic vision is interpreted synchronically rather than diachronically. It is not a succession of empires, therefore, but a fourfold multifaceted imperial oppression. According to Winstanley, the first of the four beasts described in Daniel was royal power, which by force makes a way for the economically powerful to rule over others, ‘making the conquered a slave; giving the earth to some, denying the Earth to others’; the second Beast he regarded as the power of laws, which maintain power and privilege in the hands of the few by the threat of imprisonment and punishment; the third Beast is what Winstanley calls ‘the thieving art of buying and selling the earth with the fruits one to another’; the fourth Beast is the power of the clergy which is used to give a religious, or, in something like Marx’s sense, an ideological, gloss on the privileges of the few. According to Winstanley, the Creation will never be at peace until these four beasts are overthrown, and only then will there be the coming of Christ’s kingdom (Fire in the Bush, Sabine 1941: 464–71; CHL ii.190–6). Winstanley’s biblical exegesis offers, even in some of the early writings, a grasp of the way in which Bible and practice intermingle and influence each other. The application of the biblical imagery is related to both personal and social transformation and succeeds in capturing the application of the apocalyptic imagery, in that fulfilment of the promises is also related to, and illuminated by, the peculiar circumstances in which he found himself. The New Testament writers were not just interpreters of sacred texts, or indeed, prognosticators of the fulfilment of its promises, for they themselves live out the promises and they believe themselves to be dwelling in the midst of its fulfilment and so act accordingly. Winstanley, like Blake after him, was not the kind of millenarian who believed that it was just a matter of waiting for the divine to break into the mundane and the New Heaven to be established on earth. The task of ‘building the New Jerusalem’ was a venture in which humans were very much involved. ‘I have writ, I have acted, I have peace: and now I must wait to see the spirit do his own work in the hearts of others’, he wrote, indicating the importance, and limits, of human involvement through writing and action. The juxtaposition of individual conversion and social

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transformation is at the heart of Blake’s work too. What G. A. Rosso describes as the ‘paradox of summing up history in an eschatological narrative while keeping the future open for collective conversion’ (Rosso 1990: 187) points to what happens when working to convert people through education takes place: the eschatological narrative inevitably is put into second place as the primary task is to enable people to know what makes for their peace. Filling the space of the present time with the task of raising awareness constrains, even if it does not eliminate, the power of the eschatological narrative. There is a task in hand which will enable the ‘rising of Christ in sons and daughters’ and that is what both Winstanley and Blake set out to achieve in their writing. ABIEZER COPPE, RALPH CUDWORTH

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Abiezer Coppe: one indwelt by God If Winstanley’s sentiments, commitments, choice of biblical passages and hermeneutical method give us an insight into the general background of Blake’s biblical hermeneutics, the survey of the radical context would not be complete without attention to Winstanley’s contemporary, Abiezer Coppe (1619–1672; Coppe 1987; Hill 1972). In The Fiery Flying Roll Coppe offers a biblical hermeneutic which, like Winstanley’s, is rooted in experience. The difference is that Coppe comes to see God not just as in other human beings but primarily in himself. It is as if Coppe anticipates Blake’s understanding manifest in the Job engravings, where the depiction of God and Job are very similar and Job’s redemption is the result of seeing the divine in himself and so viewing with the eyes of God. Coppe’s tract is about his conviction that, as a result of an overwhelming spiritual experience, he is merged with the divine and so looks on the world and its activities with divine eyes. This experience does not give any sense of superiority. Quite the reverse. The experience is of abasement and from that abasement he experiences affinity with the humblest of people and realises the iniquity of maintaining social distinctions, for the eyes of the divine view all flesh equally (‘Thus saith the Lord, I in thee, who am eternal majesty bowed down thy form, to deformity’, Fiery Flying Roll, Hopton 1987: 47). Coppe saw himself as brother of Ezekiel, whom he regarded as ‘more seraphicall than his predecessors’. Ezekiel, said Coppe, was ‘son of Buzi’, which Coppe interprets as meaning ‘son of contempt’ (an indication of Coppe’s facility with Hebrew). Coppe sees himself not only as an embodiment of the divine but as one indwelt by God; imbued with the divine spirit like the ancient prophets, he

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imitates their behaviour. He explicitly links his actions with what he calls the prophets’ ‘pranks’. Like Ezekiel, who performed some strange acts, which turned out to be significant, so Coppe offers the ‘strange postures’ of one who incarnates the ‘most excellent majesty’ as signs to his generation: He [Ezekiel] saw (and I in him see) various strange visions, and he was, and I am set in several strange postures. . . . Amongst many of his pranks – this was one, he shaves off all the hair of his head: and off his beard, then weighs them in a pair of scales . . . this is not in a corner, or in a chamber, but in the midst of the streets of the great City Hierusalem, and the man all this while neither mad nor drunk. (Fiery Flying Roll, Hopton 1987: 41; Hawes 1996: 91; Smith 1989: 55)

What is striking about this is the way in which Coppe merges his own ego with that of his prophetic predecessor of the sixth century BCE, so that the earlier prophet, indwelt by the divine spirit, extends to the life of the seventeenth century CE. In a curious anticipation of Blake’s occasional mirror-writing Coppe can reject conventional linear reading and praise those who ‘have their lessons without book’, so that, in a manner typical of the number puzzles (cf. Rev 13:18) and apocalyptic riddles of the Bible, the prophet’s words are as much about effect as patent meaning: better scholars they, that have their lessons without book, and can read God (not by rote) but plainly and perfectly . . . within book, and without book, and as well without book, as within book: that can read him downwards and upwards, upwards and downwards, from left to right, from right to left. . . . (Coppe, Some Sweet Sips, 1649, quoted in Hawes 1996: 60)

Coppe describes in great detail his dealings with a beggar and the temptations he went through to ignore the beggar or fob him off (Fiery Flying Roll, Hopton 1987: 39–41), and his decision to deliver his money to the poor despised ‘Maul of Dedington in Oxfordshire’, and to other ‘poor cripples, lazars, rogues, thieves, whores, and cut-purses, who are flesh of my flesh’ (ibid., Hopton 1987: 37). ‘The most strange, secret, terrible, yet most glorious design of God’, according to Coppe, is to ‘choose the base things to confound the things that are’.8 His extraordinary ‘conversion’ experience led to the conviction that ‘excellent majesty dwelt in the writer of this Roll’, the one who ‘reconciled all things to himself ’. Thus the words of Coppe become the words of God and the experience of God is none other than that of Coppe, who is indwelt by God. Divine

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indwelling means that his experience becomes theologically definitive. Coppe, as the Lord God, instructs the rulers to ‘kiss beggars’ and ‘own them, they are flesh of your flesh, your own brethren, your own sisters, every whit as good (and if I should stand in competition with you) in some degrees better than yourselves’ (Fiery Flying Roll, Hopton 1987: 37–8). This contrasts with Blake’s understanding of divine life as dwelling in, or recognising that one dwells within, the Divine Body. This understanding comes through the exercise of the imagination, which (as the Job sequence makes clear) requires an upheaval every bit as cataclysmic as the one that is described by Coppe. While Coppe’s experience is not exclusive, the form of his message – in which he, as the voice of God, challenges the ruler – places him in a position of authority, which differs from Blake. Blake, it is true, is a prophet but so, he believed, is every honest man. What is more, life in the Divine Body is the prerogative of all, and Blake’s work is directed to enabling all and sundry, through the exercise of the imagination, to become what they already are. Thus they may realise their true vocation. Unlike Winstanley, whose theology is a reflection on experience and initiated by a divine revelation to eat bread together, Coppe, being indwelt by God, did not need to refer back to any divine sanction in the Bible. Coppe’s theological treatise is the divine word. He takes Winstanley’s radicalism to another level, therefore. Even in comparison with Winstanley’s impassioned prose, the form of The Fiery Flying Roll conveys an extraordinary linguistic power, which imposes itself as an assault on the sense and emotions. The words embody and effect the judgement of which they speak (Hawes 1996: 68–87). Here is the antecedent of what Robert Lowth wrote about biblical prophecy: ‘prophetic impulse, which bears away the mind with irresistible violence, and frequently in rapid transitions from near to remote objects, from human to divine’ (above, p. 128). It was suggested earlier that this applied to Blake’s prophecy too; it certainly does to Coppe’s words of divine judgement (or one should say the divine words speaking through Coppe). As with Blake’s engagement with the Bible, here there is hardly a line which does not have some biblical allusion, but the biblical words have been woven into something new, a new word of God in which the received words mutate in a kaleidoscopic way, just as the prophetic words are digested and re-appear in different combinations in the Book of Revelation. Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688): ‘not only book-taught but God-taught’ From a very different background to Winstanley, yet evincing similar theological sentiments, is Ralph Cudworth, a Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, and one of the Cambridge Platonists. He too is dependent on 1 Corinthians 2:

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He is a true Christian indeed, not he that is only book-taught, but he that is Godtaught; he that hath an Unction from the holy one (as our Apostle calleth it) that teacheth him all things; he that hath the Spirit of Christ within him, that searcheth out the deep things of God: For as no man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him, even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God. Ink and Paper can never make us Christians, can never beget a new nature, a living principle in us; can never form Christ, or any true notions of spiritual things in our hearts. The Gospel, that new Law which Christ delivered to the world, it is not merely a Letter without us, but a quickening Spirit within us. Cold Theorems and Maxims, dry and jejune Disputes, lean syllogistical reasonings, could never yet of themselves beget the least glimpse of true heavenly light, the least sap of saving knowledge in any heart. All this is but the groping of the poor dark spirit of man after truth, to find it out with his own endeavours, and feel it with his own cold and benumbed hands. Words and syllables which are but dead things, cannot possibly convey the living notions of heavenly truths to us. The secret mysteries of a Divine Life, of a New Nature, of Christ formed in our hearts; they cannot be written or spoken, language and expressions cannot reach them; neither can they ever be truly understood, except the soul it self be kindled from within, and awakened into the life of them. (Cudworth 1647; and on the wider interpretative context, Hessayon and Keene 2006)9

Like Winstanley, who has strong words to say about the bondage to book learning, Cudworth, perhaps surprisingly, suspects subservience to learning and scholarship that is not matched by the ability to live the divine life to which they bear witness: Now therefore, I beseech you, Let us consider, whether or not we know Christ indeed: Not by our acquaintance with Systems and Models of Divinity; not by our skill in Books and Papers; but by our keeping of Christ’s Commandments. All the Books and writings which we converse with, they can but represent spiritual Objects to our understandings; which yet we can never see in their own true Figure, Colour, and Proportion, until we have a Divine light within, to irradiate, and shine upon them. Though there be never such excellent truths concerning Christ, and his Gospel, set down in words and letters; yet they will be but unknown Characters to us, until we have a Living-spirit within us, that can decipher them: until the same Spirit, by secret Whispers in our hearts, do comment upon them, which did at first endite them. There be many that understand the

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Greek and Hebrew of the Scripture, the Original Languages in which the Text was written, that never understood the Language of the spirit. There is a Caro and a Spiritus, a Flesh and a Spirit, a Body and a Soul, in all the writings of the Scriptures: it is but the Flesh, and Body, of Divine Truths, that is printed upon Paper; which many Moths of Books and Libraries, do only feed upon; many Walking Skeletons of knowledge, that bury and entomb Truths, in the Living Sepulchres of their souls, do only converse with: such as never did any thing else, but pick at the mere Bark and Rind of Truths, and crack the Shells of them. But there is a Soul, and Spirit of divine Truths, that could never yet be congealed into Ink, that could never be blotted upon Paper, which by a secret traduction and conveyance, passeth from one Soul unto another; being able to dwell and lodge no where, but in a Spiritual being, in a Living thing; because it self is nothing but Life and Spirit. Neither can it, where indeed it is, express it self sufficiently in Words and Sounds, but it will best declare and speak it self in Actions: as the old manner of writing among the Egyptians was, not by Words, but Things. The Life of divine Truths, is better expressed in Actions than in Words, because Actions are more Living things, than words; Words, are nothing but the dead Resemblances, and Pictures of those Truths, which live and breath in Actions: and the Kingdome of God (as the Apostle speaketh) consisteth not in Word, but in Life, and Power. (Cudworth 1647)

The echoes of 1 John 3:18 (‘My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth’) and the parallels to Winstanley are striking and anticipate key elements of Blake’s understanding of the relationship between the spiritual insight and the letter on the page of the Bible which the light of the Spirit illuminates. Hans Denck: ‘salvation is not bound to Scripture’ Hans Denck died in 1527 of plague, still only in his late twenties. If he had not died of natural causes, his views, which were already considered with suspicion, so that he had to offer a ‘recantation’, would have had even more influence (and indeed are paralleled in the writings of Sebastian Franck, whose writings were translated into English in the seventeenth century, Smith 1989: 107–84). Denck’s theological position was distinctive and has many of the hallmarks of a particular hermeneutical approach in Christian theology the importance of which should not be underestimated. He was what would later be called an ‘Anabaptist’ – subsequently a mark of reproach. He had undergone adult rebaptism and took a

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position in which he rejected violence and, like Winstanley, stressed the importance of the inner law of God written on the heart as a norm for Christian living. In Denck’s so-called Recantation (published after his death) he writes of the Bible in terms similar to the way in which Winstanley wrote: Holy Scripture I hold above all human treasure but not as high as the Word of God that is living, powerful and eternal – unattached and free of all elements of this world, for since it is God himself, it is Spirit and not letter, written without pen or paper so that it can never be eradicated. Therefore, salvation is not bound to Scripture however useful and good it might be in furthering it. (Recantation, Bauman 1991: 251)

This is similar to Blake’s understanding of the distinction between the ‘peculiar Word’ and the ‘Word of God Universal’, in the quotation at the head of this chapter. In somewhat similar vein, Gerrard Winstanley writes in Truth Lifting up its Head, his tract of 16 October 1648, addressed to the scholars of Oxford and Cambridge, about the difference between that which is stated in scripture and that to which it bears witness, the ‘report’ on the one hand, and ‘the thing reported of ’ on the other. It is the latter which is of greater importance, and which resonates with the present experience of ‘sons and daughters in whom the spirit rests’ and who judges all things (here again we find another reference to 1 Cor 2:12–14): Therefore learn to put a difference between the Report, and the thing Reported of. The spirit that made flesh, is he that is reported of. The writings and words of Saints is the report. These reports being taken hold of, by corrupt flesh that would rule, are blemished by various translations, interpretations and constructions, that King flesh makes; but those sons and daughters in whom the spirit rests, cannot be deceived, but judge all things [cf. 1 Cor 2:15] (Truth Lifting up its Head, Sabine 1941: 124; CHL i.431)

Denck writes of the importance of an experience of God over against human wilfulness, which points to a different kind of life, something equivalent to what we may term ‘conscience’. In some such way God is present in all, even if they may not recognise it. Thus a person may be saved without Scripture. Scripture can help, but in understanding it one must know God. It confirms that the inner experience is the Christ about whom Scripture testifies. So reading the Bible enables one to know how to attain true Love, which one ‘cannot receive more directly and more easily than through Jesus Christ’.

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Denck believed God’s presence was in all people, and it is this testimony which takes precedence over the Church or the Scripture, though the latter can bear witness to him. Scripture’s authority, therefore, is dependent upon the confirmation of the experience from within. Scripture is not the possession of the experts, nor is it the kind of text that is transparent of its own interpretation. The importance of Scripture lies in witnessing to the Word, which became flesh in Jesus Christ, who comes again and again, encouraging and challenging. It is the inner experience of God present in all people which is fundamental, even if they may not recognise it. The Spirit’s role in interpretation is particularly important, therefore. BLAKE

AND THE RADICALS

Winstanley’s Truth Lifting up its Head starts with a challenge to book learning and a skilful analysis and critique of the prerogatives of academic study, going on to contrast the words of the Bible with the gospel and linking the latter with the Spirit: The Gospel is the Spirit that ruled in the Prophets and Apostles which, testified to them, that in the later days the same Spirit should be poured out upon all flesh [a clear reference to Acts 2:17: ‘in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh’]. Secondly, then their writings is not the Spirit; but a report or a declaration of that law and testimony which was within them. Now the Spirit spreading itself from East to West, from North to South, in sons and daughters is everlasting, and never dies; but is still everlasting, and rising higher and higher manifesting himself in and to mankind. (Truth Lifting up its Head, Sabine 1941: 101; CHL i.410)

The critically important 1 Corinthians 2:10–16, which is alluded to briefly on the first of the Job plates, underlies the hermeneutic that we have been examining. Blake, like his predecessors, is not supportive of the ecclesiastical privilege of biblical interpretation. ‘Every honest man is a prophet’ and that is the vocation of all God’s people. Prophecy is righteous indignation, and Winstanley’s writing is full of that. The writings of Blake’s sixteenth- and seventeenth-century predecessors considered in this chapter evince a robust humanism, a belief in a human’s capacity to discern the divine will independent of Bible, church and tradition.10 They reject the rule of the letter and prefer to engage with the Bible in a way which sees it as a witness to the divine spirit, whose role is primary and whose

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work might be tasted experientially only by those who are not in thrall to the daughters of memory but open to inspiration and, especially, ‘by those who are the meek of the earth’. And the declaration of this law of righteousness shall rise out of the dust, out of the poor people that are trod under foot: For, as the declaration of the Son of man was first declared by Fisher-men, & men that the learned, covetous Scholars despised: so the declaration of the righteous law shall spring up from the poor, the base and despised ones, and fools of the world. (New Law, Sabine 1941: 205–6; CHL i.528)

There is in the writings of Blake and Winstanley attention to the basic response to human need. The last stanza of Blake’s ‘Divine Image’ and the sharp social critique of the Songs of Experience poem ‘Holy Thursday’ both evince this. Winstanley’s deceptively simple response to the question ‘What is it to Walk righteously, or in the sight of Reason?’ anticipates Blake’s sentiments, and echoes themes from Matthew 25:31–45 (cf. reference to this section in Truth Lifting up its Head, Sabine 1941: 140; CHL i.448 and Saints Paradice, VI; CH i.375): Q: What is it to walk righteously, or in the sight of reason? First. When a man lives in all acts of love to his fellow-creatures; feeding the hungry; clothing the naked; relieving the oppressed; seeking the preservation of others as well as himself; looking upon himself as a fellow creature (though he be Lord of all creatures) to all other creatures of all kinds; and so doing to them, as he would have do to him; to this end, that the Creation may be upheld and kept together by the spirit of love, tenderness and oneness, and that no creature may complain of any act of unrighteousness and oppression from him. Secondly, when a man loves in the knowledge and love of the Father, seeing the Father in every creature, and so loves, delights, obeys, and honours the Spirit which he sees in the creature, and so acts rightly towards that creature in whom he sees the spirit of the Father for to rest, according to its measure. (Truth Lifting up its Head, Sabine 1941: 111; CHL i.418–19)

Blake inherited the non-conformist, antinomian sub-culture, not the Enlightenment radicalism of Paine. The eschatological moment, when God would be all in all, was for Winstanley and those with similar views a present possibility, even a reality, not just a utopian hope:

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There shall be no buying or selling, no fairs nor markets, but the whole earth shall be a common treasury for every man, for the earth is the Lord’s. And mankind, thus drawn up to live and act in the Law of love, equity and oneness, is but the great house wherein the Lord himself dwells, and every particular one a several mansion: and as one spirit of righteousness is common to all, so the earth and blessings of the earth shall be common to all; for now all is but the Lord, and the Lord is all in all. Eph. iv 5, 6. (The New Law of Righteousness, Sabine 1941: 184; CHL i.507)

The reference to Ephesians 4:6 (‘One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all’) indicates the belief that God is already all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15:28 and Ephes 1:22–3). Divine power is already in humans.11 ‘Action is the life of all’ is not some response to an imperative, therefore, for it is constitutive of what life in God is all about. This is not just a vague consciousness, or feeling, of being part of the God who is all in all, so much as comprehending what that may mean in so far as one acts in particular ways. The very act of participating in forgiveness of sins reveals to those with eyes to see, whether the subjects themselves, or those who observe them, what life in the Divine Body is. In the Job sequence Blake interprets Job’s prayer for his friends as the moment of redemption. This action is the demonstration of that which hitherto was only intellectual apprehension of the divine, which Job and his wife had tasted in the vision of Christ. Theology involves an act of relating (with humanity and the rest of creation) in ways which are true to the reality of ‘God being all and in all’. ‘Propriety’, the claim of something (even somebody) as ‘mine’ as opposed to ‘thine’, flies in the face of the fact that ‘Opposition is true Friendship’ (MHH20, E42). The proprietorial attitude is at odds with the unity of those in the Divine Body who may be distinctive but whose particularity is not characterised by ‘propriety’. What Winstanley calls ‘covetousness’, and Blake ‘selfhood’, impedes the Spirit within, whose life, now at work in men and women, is about unity and the acceptance of ‘Contraries’, as that which is of God in one’s self recognises and relates to that which is of God in the other.

8

‘From impulse not from rules’ Blake and Jesus

Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives. And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.1

In his watercolour interpreting John 8:1–11 (1805; Boston Museum of Fine Art, B486), we see Blake capturing the moment in verses 7–8 when Jesus says ‘he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her’, and stoops to the ground for the second time. The woman’s hands are tied. She has her left breast bare and her hair is dishevelled. The accusers retreat (the feet of one of the accusers can be seen as he turns away), and Jesus is left alone with the woman. It is an intensely personal encounter. Indeed, it is Jesus who in stooping to the ground in effect bows before the woman. This is one of those possibilities that Blake found implicit in the biblical text and exploited in order to make his point about the divine image already being

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in the woman. Jesus the Divine in Human honours another with the divine image in her by seemingly bowing down before her. Jesus’ fingers seem to touch nothing at all on the earth, as the woman watches his actions. He seems to point to the space where the woman can be, which the accusers have vacated.2 Blake returns to this story in a long section of ‘The Everlasting Gospel’:

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Was Jesus chaste? or did he Give any Lessons of Chastity? The morning blush’d fiery red: Mary was found in Adulterous bed; Earth groan’d beneath, & Heaven above Trembled at discovery of Love. Jesus was sitting in Moses’ Chair, They brought the trembling Woman There. Moses commands she be stoned to death, What was the [words del.] sound of Jesus’ breath? He laid his hand on Moses’ Law: The Ancient Heavens, in Silent Awe, Writ with Curses from Pole to Pole, All away began to roll: The Earth trembling & Naked lay In secret bed of Mortal Clay, On Sinai felt the hand Divine Putting back the bloody shrine, And she heard the breath of God As she heard by Eden’s flood: ‘Good & Evil are no more! Sinai’s trumpets, cease to roar! Cease, finger of God, to write! The Heavens are not clean in thy Sight. Thou art Good, & thou Alone; Nor may the sinner cast one stone. To be good only, is to be A God [Devil in pencil] or else a Pharisee. Thou Angel of the Presence Divine That didst create this Body of Mine, Wherefore hast thou writ these Laws

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And Created Hell’s dark jaws? My Presence I will take from thee; A Cold Leper thou shalt be. Tho’ thou wast so pure & bright That Heaven was Impure in thy Sight, Tho’ thy Oath turn’d Heaven Pale, Tho’ thy Covenant built Hell’s Jail, Tho’ thou didst all to Chaos roll With the Serpent for its soul, Still the breath Divine does move And the breath Divine is Love. Mary, Fear Not! Let me see The Seven Devils that torment thee; Hide not from my Sight thy Sin, That forgiveness thou maist win. ‘Has no Man Condemned thee?’ ‘No Man, Lord:’ ‘then what is he Who shall Accuse thee? Come Ye forth, Fallen fiends of Heav’nly birth That have forgot your Ancient love And driven away my trembling Dove. You shall bow before her feet; You shall lick the dust for Meat; And tho’ you cannot Love, but Hate, Shall be beggars at Love’s Gate. What was thy love? Let me [see’t del.] see it; Was it love or Dark Deceit?’ ‘Love too long from Me has fled; ’Twas dark deceit, to Earn my bread; ’Twas Covet, or ’twas Custom, or [Twas del.] Some trifle not worth caring for; That they may call a [crime del.] shame & Sin [The del.] Love’s Temple [where del.] that God dwelleth in, And hide in secret hidden Shrine The Naked Human form divine, And render that a Lawless thing On which the Soul Expands its wing. But this, O Lord, this was my Sin

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When first I let these Devils in In dark pretence to Chastity: Blaspheming Love, blaspheming thee. Thence Rose Secret Adulteries, And thence did Covet also rise. My Sin Thou hast forgiven me, Canst thou forgive my Blasphemy? Canst thou return to this dark Hell, And in my burning bosom dwell? And canst thou die that I may live? And canst thou Pity & forgive?’ Then Roll’d the shadowy Man away From the Limbs of Jesus, to make them his prey, An Ever devo(u)ring appetite Glittering with festering Venoms bright, Crying, [I’ve found del.] Crucify this cause of distress, [You del.] Who don’t keep the secrets of Holiness! All Mental Powers by Diseases we bind, But He heals the Deaf, & the Dumb, & the Blind. Whom God has afflicted for Secret Ends, He comforts & Heals & calls them Friends.’ But, when Jesus was Crucified, Then was perfected His glittr’ing pride: In three Nights he devour’d his prey, And still he devours the Body of Clay; For dust & Clay is the Serpent’s meat, Which never was made for Man to Eat. Extract from William Blake’s Notebook, ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ c. 1818 (as punctuated by Keynes 753–5, E521–3, for original see Appendix 1)3

‘The Everlasting Gospel’ is a series of verses about events in the gospels, not extant in a finished form (1818, E518–25, Erdman 1965 and 1977). It contains several attempts to versify the story of Jesus, who is presented throughout as a dissident, ‘humble towards God proud towards Man’. As David Erdman comments, these deceptively simple verses mark a return to some of the themes of Blake’s work nearly thirty years before. At several points the fragments of ‘The Everlasting

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Gospel’ start with questions, for example, ‘Was Jesus humble?’, or, as here, ‘Was Jesus chaste?’ (Paley 2003: 178–200; Erdman 1977). The answer to the question about chastity is given here by a telling of the story of the Woman taken in Adultery in John 8, whom Blake identified with Mary Magdalene (lines 4 and 43; Luke 8:2).4 Although there are various insertions, it represents the longest coherent section of this fragmentary work. This section of the poem falls into four parts. First of all there is Jesus’ challenge to Moses’ law (lines 5–28), followed by a challenge to the Angel of the Divine Presence, who is held responsible for the woman’s (and Jesus’) situation (lines 29–40). In the third part (lines 41–80) the focus turns to the woman and her growing awareness of the circumstances which led to her predicament. The final section (lines 81–96) concerns Jesus’ death and how what happened to Jesus on the cross parallels what happened to the woman. The narrative starts with a re-telling of John 8:2–11. Blake brings out the antinomian features of the story. The poem moves, via an analysis of the predicament that Mary finds herself in as the result of the power over her of the Angel of the Divine Presence and the accompanying ‘fallen fiends of heavenly birth’, to what, in effect, is a confession by Mary of the shallowness of her previous life. Finally, there is a remarkable interpretation of the redemptive process that takes place thereby, as ideas, probably derived from the Letter to the Colossians, illuminate Mary’s redemption which mirrors that which took place in the case of Jesus on the cross. P A R T 1:

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Blake has Jesus sitting in ‘Moses’ chair’ (Matt 23:2, alluded to in line 7), thereby being placed in the tradition of Moses and having to make a judgment on the case presented to him. The critical character of Jesus’ response is demonstrated by the language about cosmic disturbance (lines 10–20: ideas which had attended Blake’s much more earthy activity in verses written twenty years before, ‘When Klopstock England defied’! E500–1). The earth becomes the focus of this crisis in the cosmos as the action of one who is mortal clay leads to Jesus’ pronouncement (line 15–16). The trembling of the earth (lines 5 and 15), even Sinai, picks up themes from passages like Psalm 18:7 (‘Then the earth shook and trembled’) and Psalm 68:8 (‘the earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of God: even Sinai itself was moved at the presence of God’). The whole cosmos is affected as the biblical curse is about to be implemented (line 12; Deut 28:15; 29:20): There will be devastation of the land (Deut 29:23).

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The earth from which humans are formed is closely linked with the woman ‘of mortal clay’. It will suffer because she has been caught in her secret bed (line 16). It is her deed which has precipitated this critical moment. The earth-shattering events in response to this challenge to the law form an eschatological event of ultimate importance, as the echo of a text like Rev 6:14 indicates (line 14: ‘the sky vanished like a scroll rolling itself up and every mountain was moved from its place’). The poem turns back to the Law, mentioned in line 11. The ‘Hand Divine’ this time is not writing laws but manhandling Sinai and ‘the bloody shrine’ (Exod 20:24), a reference to the sacrifices on the altar (line 18). In lines 19–20 there is a contrast between the woman (the first ‘she’ in line 19) and Eve (line 20). Both heard the breath of God, but, whereas Eve heard condemnation (Gen 3:16), Mary experienced redemption. The proclamation ‘good and evil are no more’ proclaims Blake’s belief that an era defining good and evil on the basis of the Law has come to an end and ‘a new heaven is begun’ (MHH, Plate 3, E34). With the words ‘Cease finger of God to Write’ (line 23; cf. ‘God Writing upon the Tables of the Covenant’, c. 1805; National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, B4485), Jesus pronounces the end of the era of law (Matt 11:13; cf. Rom 10:4, written on Sinai with the finger of God, Exod 31:18). The cessation of writing laws means bringing to an end the contrasts which result in exclusion and negation (e.g. between cleanness and uncleanness, cf. Mark 7:19). The imperative ‘Cease finger of God to write’ brings to mind John 8 where we read that ‘Jesus stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground’. Whatever else the words in John 8:6 meant for Blake, they do not mean that he was writing a replacement law. As we see from the watercolour, the writing finger of Jesus can be interpreted as showing a spiritual space available which the woman, who is just as much the divine in human as Jesus, can claim. Line 25: ‘Thou art Good, & thou Alone’: This echoes Mark 10:18: ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone’. In line 26 we see the consequence of this: no sinner should cast a stone. Yet the identity of the addressee in lines 24–5 is unclear (‘The Heavens are not clean in Thy sight. Thou art good, and Thou alone’). Is it Jesus, the woman, or the Angel of the Divine Presence? Probably in the light of line 36 it is the angel, an interpretation made more likely by the fact that Blake deleted ‘God’ on line 28 and replaced it with ‘Devil’. The problem with asserting sole goodness, lines 27–8 (‘To be good only is to be A God [Devil] or else a Pharisee’), is a denial of the contraries, not only in the human soul but also in the divinity.

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In this passage we have the judgement which Jesus passes on the Angel of the Presence for his part in bringing the woman into her predicament of inhabiting a body of flesh and blood (line 30), of subservience to the laws (line 31) and a hell of punishment for those who disobey (echoes here of Job’s predicament). The fate of the leper (Lev 13:45–6) is that of the Angel of the Divine Presence (line 34), the day star who is brought down to hell (Isa 14:12, 16 cf. Ezek 28:17). The judgement pronounced in line 34 also echoes Numbers 12:10, when Miriam became leprous (cf. Exod 4:6). Lines 35–9 are a mixture of passages traditionally linked with Satan (35, Ezek 28:12–14), blended with the God of the Hebrew Bible whose oath ‘turned heaven pale’ (Gen 22:16 and Isa 45:23), with a covenant which imprisoned all in disobedience, and with a creation reverting to the chaos before the act of creation (Gen 1:2, and perhaps in bondage to decay, Romans 8:21; 7:24; 11:32a; Galatians 3:10, 23). The Angel of the Presence appears here, as elsewhere in Blake’s later works (e.g. in the Job engravings, M32:11, E131, and Laocoön), as a demiurge and lawgiver, a divinity reproached by Jesus for keeping humankind in thrall to a religion of law and the sanctions connected with it. A less harsh picture is found in Blake’s depiction of Gen 3:21 in ‘The Angel of the Divine Presence clothing Adam and Eve with coats of skins’ (1803; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, B436). Yet despite a dislocated and blighted world, in line 41 the breath divine that is love is still at work, and the consequences of its work, manifested in ‘the sound of Jesus’ breath’ (line 10), have been described in the previous thirty lines. P A R T 3:

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The focus now turns to the Woman. Her experience of release prompts Jesus to ask her to confess her shortcomings (line 45). She ‘must win’ (line 46) forgiveness by her recognition of what has gone on in her life. The allusion to John 8:10–11 (lines 48–9) is followed by what is in effect an exorcism (49–52) of the ‘seven devils that torment thee’ (line 44, Luke 8:2). The reference in line 50 may be to the angels who were condemned for consorting with women in Gen 6:2, a story described at greater length, as we have seen, in the Book of Enoch 7–10 (Laurence’s translation). The link with the seduction of the women by the angels (e.g. ‘The Descent of the Angels to One of the Daughters of Men’, 1824–7; National Gallery of Art Washington, B 827 1,

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above, p. 111) raises the possibility that what we have in ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ is Blake seeing in the story of the Woman taken in Adultery a reversal of that primeval event and its terrible consequences for the world. The ‘fallen fiends’ instead of dominating the woman’s life become subordinate to her (line 53). Her tyranny once over, Mary is asked: ‘What was thy love? Let Me see it; Was it love or dark deceit?’ (lines 57–8). The distinction between ‘love and dark deceit’ reflects Blake’s view that love is not a crime (line 58). In his poem, ‘A Little Girl Lost’ (E29), Blake looks back to ‘a former time’, when ‘Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime’. For Blake, love manifested in sexual intercourse is not itself a crime. The sin to which Mary confesses, however, is hypocrisy, habit, a pretence to chastity. In allowing her life to be ruled by the ‘seven devils’, Mary turned love into deceit, a means to a covetous end, a mere habit, which ended up being a repressed, secret shame (60–5, Tolley 1962: 175). From then on, she became aware of herself as an object of shame in the sight of others (line 63). The seven devils’ abode was ‘in secret hidden shrine’ (line 65), probably a reference to her body, something suggested by lines 65–6: ‘And hide in secret hidden Shrine/The Naked Human form divine’. Another possibility is that, in the light of the way in which Blake uses language and imagery about the tabernacle elsewhere, the shrine here is a reference to the woman’s genitalia which she had come to view as a place of shame when instead they should have been viewed as a place ‘on which the Soul expands its wing’ (line 68).6 The woman’s pretence to chastity let the devils in (lines 71–4). Mary confesses that something even worse has taken place. Blaspheming love had meant blaspheming Christ (line 72). This amounts to blasphemy, a denial of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 3:16; 6:19, line 64). It is blasphemy against the Spirit (line 76, cf. Mark 3:29; lines 64, 78, Tolley 1962: 175), which has meant driving out Christ from her bosom (line 78). P A R T 4:

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In response to the woman’s anguished question (line 80) to forgive the sin of blasphemy, the poem dramatically changes perspective. At the moment Mary asks for pity and forgiveness we have the reference to what appears to be the death of Jesus (line 81: ‘Then Roll’d the shadowy Man away From the Limbs of Jesus’), crucified for being a ‘cause of distress’ (line 85) and not keeping ‘the secrets of holiness’ (line 86). ‘The shadowy man’ (line 81) is probably that part of the human person (cf. 95) akin to what Blake elsewhere calls ‘selfhood’, whose power ends at death. Blake writes of ‘the shadowy man’ rolling away, prey to a devouring appetite of Satan (81–3, cf. 95–6; Tolley 1962: 176).

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These lines are probably to be understood in the light of the Letter to the Colossians 2:11–15.7 Here there is a reference to the ‘putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ’, followed in 2:14 by ‘Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us . . . nailing it to his cross’, and finally in 2:15 the despoiling of the principalities and powers. Blake seems to have followed a pattern of interpretation in which the cross was seen as a moment when Christ divested himself of the principalities and powers by taking off the body of flesh. So, Jesus’ death turned out to be the victory in the teeth of defeat because Satan overstretched himself and had Jesus killed (lines 91–4). So, the ‘perfecting of his glittering pride’ (line 92) is a reference to the hubris of Satan (Tolley 1962: 176). The plausibility of the link to Colossians 2 is supported by other references to this passage from Colossians to be found elsewhere in ‘The Everlasting Gospel’. Thus in The Four Zoas 8:481–4 and elsewhere in Blake’s work we find: Thus in a living Death the nameless shadow all things bound All mortal things made permanent that they may be put off Time after time by the Divine Lamb who died for all And all in him died. & he put off all mortality (E383, Tolley 1962: 176)

Blake writes of Christ subduing ‘the Serpent bulk of Natures dross/Till he had nail’d it to the Cross’ (K749, E524), a clear reference to Colossians 2:14, of Jesus taking on ‘the Satanic Body of Holiness’ ( J90:38; E250), and of Christ taking on ‘Sin in the Virgins womb’ and putting ‘it off on the Cross and Tomb’ (E524; cf. Paradise Lost 12:415–17, quoted in Paley 2003: 199). So, Blake’s emphasis seems to be the removal of ‘the shadowy man’ as one peels off clothes, rather than attacking and despoiling the angelic powers (lines 81–3).8 What Blake writes about here is portrayed in images in Plate 13 of his Milton, where Milton is described as divesting himself of the robes of obligation (M14:13, E108). The putting off of the ‘rotten rags’ and ‘filthy garments’ of Memory (M41:4–6, E142; Isa 64:6) to be clothed with Inspiration reveals ‘the Naked Human Form Divine’ (line 66, E522, Blake’s ‘clay’ echoes Milton’s ‘darksome house of mortal clay’ in ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’, Stanza 2). Also, in his picture of ‘The Ascension’ (1803–5; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, B505) Blake seems to offer a visualisation of his reading of Colossians 2:13–15. At first glance the descending angels appear to be robes being cast aside by the ascending Christ, a visual deceit that Blake may well have intended. Christ strips off the angels

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who then descend to be the angelic messengers of Acts 1:9–10 (biblical references mentioned by Blake). Just as Elisha ‘took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him’ (2 Kings 2:13) as he inherits a ‘double portion of Elijah’s spirit’ (2 Kings 2:9), so the twelve receive the Spirit which had inspired Jesus (Acts 2; cf. Luke 4:18) as they continue ‘all that Jesus began both to do and teach’ (Acts 1:1). That Blake could have worked out an interpretation like this for himself is not impossible. In a letter of 1803 he wrote, ‘I read Greek as fluently as an Oxford scholar & the Testament is my chief master’ (E727; Ephes 6:12 is quoted at the start of FZ, E300). Even if he still had only rudimentary Greek when he wrote these lines of ‘The Everlasting Gospel’, it would have been perfectly possible for him to have noted the use of the same Greek word in Colossians 3:9 and 2:15 and to have seen that the ‘putting off the old man’ in 3:9 might equate with ‘putting off of the principalities and powers’ in 2:15. In the lines we have considered from ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ Jesus is not portrayed as a teacher of chastity or of moral virtue so much as one who enables the space for the woman to enjoy discovering (or, better according to Blake, rediscovering) the human form divine in herself – much as Blake had hinted at in his watercolour of this passage. What is striking is that the third and fourth parts of the poem make a parallel between what happens to the woman and what happens to Jesus. The foul fiends are driven out from the woman just as Jesus triumphs over the Serpent when he is released from the body of flesh. So, as in Colossians, what happened to Jesus at the cross becomes the key to understanding what happened to the whole of humanity. Selfhood is laid aside. It is a recapturing of that state of being in the divine image which is never lost in men and women, but which needs to be uncovered (which Blake seems to be outlining in an important passage in Milton 32:30–8, E132). Redemption from a living death is a possibility for all mortals as they mirror Christ’s death by putting off mortality’s negative effects (FZviii:481–4, E383, cf. John 5:24). In this passage we find Blake bringing together a passage from the gospels and one from the Pauline letter in order to illuminate the way in which Jesus, who acted ‘from impulse not from rules’ (MHH 23–4, E43), offers a way of liberation and self-realisation. To explain this Blake used Pauline language: divesting the body of flesh, as the Letter to the Colossians puts it, is for Blake ‘the annihilation of selfhood’ (cf. Milton, Plate 15). BLAKE

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OTHER EVIDENCE

Blake occasionally refers back to the accounts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. His remarks on this subject are always clear and pungent. In the ‘Annotations to

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Watson’s Apology’ he wrote that ‘Christ died as an Unbeliever’ (‘Annotations to Watson’s Apology’, E614), anticipating views that have become commonplace in modern discussion of the Jesus of history and his non-conformity. So, even if Blake was not aware of the emphasis on the fulfilment of Jewish messianic hopes as key to Jesus’ message (Schweitzer 1923), he did see Jesus as a dissident who challenged the political authorities (‘Everlasting Gospel’, E519–20; Reimarus 1970; but cf. Paley 2003: 185). While modern students of the New Testament have questioned whether we can any longer polarise Jesus with the Judaism of his day (Sanders 1985), Blake made Jesus the archetypical antinomian: Wherefore did Christ come? Was it not to abolish the Jewish imposture? Was not Christ murder’d because he taught that God lov’d all Men & was their Father and forbad all contention for Worldly prosperity, in opposition to the Jewish scriptures? (Annotations to Watson’s Apology, punctuation as Keynes 387, E614)

In one of his most daring statements about Jesus as an antinomian, Blake presents him as the pioneer of radical religion who acted ‘from impulse not from rules’ (Paley 2003: 183): The Devil answer’d : . . . did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the sabbaths God? murder those who were murderd because of him? turn away the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labor of others to support him? bear false witness when he omitted making a defence before Pilate? covet when he pray’d for his disciples, and when he bid them shake off the dust of their feet against such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments: Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse: not from rules. (Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 23–4, E43)

The passages here cited by the Devil as indicative of Jesus’ antinomianism include Mark 2:27 (cf. Matt 12:1–8; Lk 6:1–5), John 16:2 (cf. Matt 24:9), John 8:1–11, Matthew 10:8–10, 14 (cf. Lk 8:3), Matthew 27:13–14 (cf. John 19:9; actually John 18:20 would have been a better example because Jesus protested that he had always spoken openly, which is not strictly true in the case of the nocturnal meeting with Nicodemus), and John 17:24 (cf. Lk 22:15, where Jesus speaks of his deep desire to eat the passover with the disciples). It is not clear what ‘murder those who were murder’d because of him’ refers to, unless it

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concerns the deaths of the first Christians like Stephen (Acts 7:58–60) and James the son of Zebedee (Acts 12:2). Indirectly, Jesus would have been responsible for their deaths because of calling them (particularly James, Mark 1:19) as disciples. Not all these examples are as convincing as each other, but the general drift is clear. Jesus’ virtues are not the moral virtues of the philosophers (‘Annotations to Watson’s Apology’, E619) but those ‘virtues of delight’ mentioned in ‘The Divine Image’ (Songs of Innocence, E12). He lived by the inspiration of the Spirit and exhibited the kind of religious enthusiasm which was despised by the wise of the world: Like dr. Priestly & [Sir Isaac del.] Bacon & Newton – Poor Spiritual Knowledge is not worth a button! . . . [As del.] For thus the Gospel Sir Isaac confutes: ‘God can only be known by his Attributes; And as for the Indwelling of the Holy Ghost Or of Christ & his Father, it’s all a boast And Pride & Vanity of the imagination, That disdains to follow this World’s Fashion. . . .’ (‘Everlasting Gospel’, punctuated as Keynes 752, E519)

In ‘The Everlasting Gospel’, Jesus’ activity is pervaded with lack of concern for the propriety of custom and law. He did not respect the requirement to ‘honour his father and mother’ (E518; cf. Luke 2:49). As dissidents, John and Jesus suffered for their disobedience when ‘the Cruel Rod’ descended on them’ (E520, ‘John for disobedience bled’, E523). What Jesus did was break the shackles imposed by culture and tradition, what Blake calls the ‘mind-forg’d manacles’ of religion (‘London’, E27). A theme throughout these fragments is the ‘mental fight’, the struggle with Satan. This has its echoes in the gospels, where the ‘binding of the strong man’ (Mark 3:22) is a figurative way of describing Jesus’ struggle with the satanic powers (Myers 1988). Jesus had shattered the ‘manacles’ of traditional religion and culture because ‘he scourg’d the Merchant Canaanite/From out the Temple of His Mind’ (E524). The ‘Binding of Satan’ takes place as Jesus struggles with ‘the god of this world’ (cf. 2 Cor 4:4): And Jesus’ voice in thunders’ sound: ‘Thus I sieze the Spiritual Prey. Ye smiters with disease, make way.

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I come your King & God to sieze. Is God a smiter with disease?’ The God of this world raged in vain: He bound Old Satan in his Chain, And bursting forth [with del.], his furious ire Became a Chariot of fire. (punctuated as Keynes, 749, E523)

Like Elijah, Jesus mounts a ‘Chariot of fire’, reflecting Blake’s view of the gospels as an ongoing struggle between the forces of conformity and the spirit-filled prophet: Where’er his Chariot took its way, There Gates of Death let in the day, Broke down from every Chain & Bar; And Satan in his Spiritual War Drag’d at his Chariot wheels: loud howl’d The God of this World: louder roll’d The Chariot Wheels, & louder still His voice was heard from Zion’s Hill, And in his hand the Scourge shone bright; He scourg’d the Merchant Canaanite From out the Temple of His Mind. (punctuated as Keynes, 749, E524)

If Colossians had provided Blake with the imagery for the triumph over Satan at the cross, Revelation 20:2 and Mark 3:22 offered him the opportunity to describe a kind of ‘millennial moment’ when Jesus ‘in his Body tight does bind/Satan & all his Hellish Crew’ (E524; Paley 2003: 198). The non-conformist Jesus was humble in himself but never servile: ‘He says with most consummate art/Follow Me I am meek and lowly of heart/As that is the only way to escape/The misers net & the Gluttons trap’ (E519). His inner commitment leads him to disdain ‘to follow this Worlds Fashion’ (E519) and to act ‘with honest, triumphant Pride’ (E519). The inner conviction of the prophet and non-conformist refuses the easy pact with tradition and culture even at the expense of life: This is the Race that Jesus ran: Humble to God, Haughty to Man,

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Cursing the Rulers before the People Even to the temple’s highest Steeple; And when he humbled himself to God, Then descended the Cruel Rod. ‘If Thou humblest thyself, thou humblest me; Thou also dwell’st in Eternity. Thou art a Man, God is no more, Thy own Humanity learn to adore, For that is my Spirit of Life. Awake, arise to Spiritual Strife And thy Revenge abroad display In terrors at the Last Judgment day. God’s Mercy & Long Suffering Is but the Sinner to Judgment to bring. Thou on the Cross for them shalt pray And take Revenge at the Last Day.’ (punctuated as Keynes, 752–3, E520)

Blake seems to have shared the rationalist suspicion of miracles and offers a more nuanced account of them, which posits a subtle interplay between miracleworker and recipient –a view that anticipates much modern rationalising of the biblical miracle stories. Jesus could not do miracles where unbelief hindered, hence we must conclude that the man who holds miracles to be ceased puts it out of his own power to ever witness one. The manner of a miracle being performed is in modern times considered as an arbitrary command of the agent upon the patient, but this is an impossibility, not a miracle, neither did Jesus ever do such a miracle. Is it a greater miracle to feed five thousand men with five loaves than to overthrow all the armies of Europe with a small pamphlet? Look over the events of your own life & if you do not find that you have both done such miracles & lived by such you do not see as I do. True, I cannot do a miracle thro’ experiment & to domineer over & prove to others my superior power, as neither could Christ. But I can & do work such as both astonish & comfort me & mine. How can Paine, the worker of miracles, ever doubt Christ’s in the above sense of the word miracle? But how can Watson ever believe the above sense of a miracle, who considers it as an arbitrary act of the agent upon an unbelieving patient, whereas the Gospel says that Christ could not do a miracle because of Unbelief?

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If Christ could not do miracles because of Unbelief, the reason alledged by Priests for miracles is false; for those who believe want not to be confounded by miracles. Christ & his Prophets & Apostles were not Ambitious miracle mongers. (‘Annotations to Watson’s Apology’, punctuated as Keynes 391–2, E616–17)

Towards the end of his life, Blake annotated a copy of Thornton’s book, The Lord’s Prayer Newly Translated (E667–9). These marginal notes are among the last words he wrote on the Bible (Paley 2003: 279). He had already quoted the Lord’s Prayer in the first of the Job engravings where, as we saw, the reference is in all probability to be interpreted negatively. The comments echo the sentiments of Gerrard Winstanley in rejecting the notion that the Bible is a difficult book (p. 166 above). Blake points to the fact that ‘Christ and his Apostles were Illiterate Men Caiaphas Pilate & Herod were Learned’ (E667). Similarly, Blake alludes to Acts 4:32 and shows that he shared Winstanley’s commitment to community of goods: ‘Give us the Bread that is our due & Right by taking away Money or a Price or Tax upon what is Common to all in thy Kingdom’ (E668). The marginalia reflect Blake’s dislike of anything which suggested accommodation by Christians to the social fabric, where everything is determined by Money (E668, cf. similar sentiments in the annotations to Laocoön, E273–5). Paley considers that Blake was uninterested in the minutiae of translation and that the meaning of the Bible was to be intuited rather than translated (though Blake does note ‘I swear that Basileia βασιλεια is not Kingdom but Kingship’, E669). The paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer that Blake offers in comparison with Thornton’s is not easily restored but probably runs as follows (following Keynes 788, and Paley 2003: 294; cf. E668–9): Jesus, our Father, who art in thy Heaven[s] call’d by thy Name the Holy Ghost, Thy Kingdom on Earth is Not, nor thy Will done, but [his Will who is del.] Satan’s, who is the God of this World, the Accuser. Let his Judgment be Forgiveness that he may be consum’d in his own Shame. Give us This Eternal Day our [ghostly del.] own right Bread by taking away Money or Debt or Tax & Value or Price, as we have all Things Common among us. Every Thing has as much right to Eternal Life as God, who is the Servant of Man. [The Acusation del.] His Judgment shall be Forgiveness that he may be consum’d in his own Shame. Leave us not in Parsimony, Satan’s Kingdom; liberate us from the Natural Man & want or Job’s Kingdom For thine is the Kingdom & the Power & the Glory & not Caesar’s or Satan’s Amen.9

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The kind of dualism we find here is typical of apocalyptic texts (and indeed of much of the New Testament) and need not, therefore, be gnostic and Manichean (Paley 2003: 295). The address to God is glossed by a reference to Jesus and the Holy Ghost, a reminder that in the Job engravings (Plate 1) the ‘Our Father who art in Heaven’ appeared to Job as Christ, the one who makes the father known (cf. Jn 1:18). Here at the end of his life Blake protests at what he sees as the attempt to subject the Bible to priest and king and the hierarchical polity that they reflect, echoing the kind of virulent criticisms that had run through the illuminated books of the 1790s. THE

GOSPEL AND THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS

This chapter concludes with the beginnings of Jesus’ life in Blake’s creative paraphrase of Matthew’s account (Matthew 1:19–24): Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. (Matt 1:19–20)

In Jerusalem 61:1–46 the Divine Voice offers a word of comfort to a ravaged Jerusalem, as she faintly discerns the divine presence in the depths of her hell. The story of Joseph and Mary is described as one of ‘the Visions of Jehovah Elohim’. As a way of offering comfort the divine voice tells Jerusalem of the moment when Joseph discovers that Mary is pregnant. Blake uses the story of Joseph coming to terms with the pregnancy of his betrothed as an example of the inadequacy of strict justice. Mary is confronted by Joseph about her supposed infidelity. Joseph, described in Matt 1:19 as a just man ( ), is not willing to follow the letter of the law and make a public example of Mary, by exposing her to public humiliation. This admittedly brief and allusive passage in Matthew’s gospel prompts an imaginative reconstruction of the meeting between Joseph and Mary, which is offered as the typical demonstration of the nature of the forgiveness of sins: Behold: in the Visions of Elohim Jehovah. behold Joseph & Mary And be comforted O Jerusalem, in the Visions of Jehovah Elohim

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She [Jerusalem] looked & saw Joseph the Carpenter in Nazareth & Mary His espoused Wife. And Mary said, If thou put me away from thee Dost thou not murder me? Joseph spoke in anger & fury. Should I Marry a Harlot & an Adulteress? Mary answerd, Art thou more pure Than thy Maker who forgiveth Sins & calls again Her that is Lost Tho She hates. he calls her again in love. I love my dear Joseph But he driveth me away from his presence. yet I hear the voice of God In the voice of my Husband. tho he is angry for a moment, he will not Utterly cast me away. if I were pure, never could I taste the sweets Of the Forgive[ne]ss of Sins! if I were holy! I never could behold the tears Of love! of him who loves me in the midst of his anger in furnace of fire. Ah my Mary: said Joseph: weeping over & embracing her closely in His arms: Doth he forgive Jerusalem & not exact Purity from her who is Polluted. I heard his voice in my sleep & his Angel in my dream: Saying, Doth Jehovah Forgive a Debt only on condition that it shall Be Payed? Doth he Forgive Pollution only on conditions of Purity That Debt is not Forgiven! That Pollution is not Forgiven Such is the Forgiveness of the Gods, the Moral Virtues of the Heathen, whose tender Mercies are Cruelty. But Jehovahs Salvation Is without Money & without Price, in the Continual Forgiveness of Sins In the Perpetual Mutual Sacrifice in Great Eternity! for behold! There is none that liveth & Sinneth not! And this is the Covenant Of Jehovah: If you Forgive one-another, so shall Jehovah Forgive You: That He Himself may Dwell among You. Fear not then to take To thee Mary thy Wife, for she is with Child by the Holy Ghost Then Mary burst forth into a Song! she flowed like a River of Many Streams in the arms of Joseph & gave forth her tears of joy’ ( Jerusalem, Plate 61, 3–28; E211–12)

As she was his betrothed, Joseph could have humiliated Mary because she lacked ‘the tokens of virginity’ and could have had her stoned (Deuteronomy 22:20–1). She might have been subject to the law of the suspected adulteress, by which a suspected adulteress could be put through a ritual to test her sexual fidelity (Numbers 5:11–31). Indeed, in the early Christian apocryphal gospel, The Protoevangelium of James, Mary and Joseph are both put to the test using a ritual of the ‘ordeal of water’ (16:1–2; Elliott 1993; and on The Protoevangelium, below, p. 219), similar to that described in Numbers 5:27–8, but both return without any ill-effects. Here in Blake’s version of Matthew’s account of Jesus’

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conception Mary puts bluntly the consequence of Joseph’s rejection of her: in effect Joseph would be murdering her (line 3). Joseph the righteous man speaks ‘in anger & fury’ and questions why he should marry a harlot and adulteress. Mary responds by firmly asking if Joseph is purer than his Maker (lines 4–5, cf. Job 4:17) and pointing to the character of God who goes on forgiving his bride Israel. She appeals to Joseph’s compassionate side without denying his righteous indignation. In the voice of her betrothed, Mary says, she hears the voice of God, and it is a God who is compassionate and forgives sins (line 8). In other words, Mary refuses to allow the angry righteous Joseph to be all she perceives in her betrothed (echoing the sentiment of Lavater, ‘never losing sight of MAN in him’, quoted and commented on by Blake, E589). His compassionate side is temporarily masked by the indignation which comes as the consequence of being a ‘just man’ (Matt 1:19). Blake, the writer who says most about the ‘two contrary states of the human soul’, has Mary point out that the possibility of the forgiveness of sins could not happen if she were always holy and pure (line 9). Making errors is the nature of humanity and offers an opportunity to practise the forgiveness of sins. Her reaction throughout is neither defensive nor contrite. We as readers are none the wiser as to whether Joseph’s initial fear about Mary’s morals is correct!10 Joseph’s response to Mary’s words is to embrace her (line 12). Joseph’s tone changes from condemnation of, and preoccupation with, the sin, to the recognition of the person before him. This may be seen in his ‘Ah my Mary’ (line 12) rather than the earlier reference to her as a ‘harlot and an adulteress’ (line 4). The use of Mary’s name suggests that forgiveness consists in part in the acceptance of the other as a who, a person needing to be forgiven, as contrasted with the what, the offence to be forgiven (so Moskal 1994: 36, quoting Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 1958, 247). Using words like ‘harlot’, Blake seems to suggest here, obscures the reality of the ‘minute particulars’ of the person before him. Thence Joseph begins the process of his growth in understanding, as first he queries whether God does not ‘exact Purity from her who is Polluted’ (line 13). At this point he recalls the voice of the angel questioning this reparative theology (line 14). Joseph’s dream now makes sense to him in the light of Mary’s announcement of her pregnancy and the consequent interaction between him and his betrothed. This enables Joseph to apply what he has learnt in the dream to Mary’s situation. The dream questions received theological wisdom: forgiveness does not come only after one has made recompense to avert the consequences of sexual misconduct (lines 15–16): ‘Doth Jehovah

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forgive a debt only on condition that it shall be Payed?’ This last is called the religion of the ‘gods’ (line 18), ‘the Moral Virtues of the Heathen, whose tender Mercies are Cruelty’. God’s ‘salvation is without Money & without Price, in the Continual Forgiveness of Sins’ (line 20, alluding to words from Isaiah 55:1, Moskal 1994: 37). The words ‘If you Forgive one-another, so shall Jehovah Forgive You: That He Himself may Dwell among You’ echo Matthew 18:15–20, a passage which more than anywhere in the life and teaching of Jesus exemplifies the ways in which mutual forgiveness of sins might take place in practice.11 Forgiveness is not one-sided, echoing the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:12, lines 22–3: ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’). The ‘Jerusalem’ passage blends the sentiments of the Lord’s Prayer (divine forgiveness and human forgiveness in a constant dialectical process), but also stresses a key Pauline theme: God’s grace has not to be earned, but is a glad response, the gift which has to be demonstrated to others. It is a well-known feature of the Pauline letters that ‘forgiveness of sins’ is noticeable by its almost complete absence. A related view is found, albeit in other terms, in Paul’s stress on the mutual recognition of the other in the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12–13; Rom 12; Galatians 6:2). It is to the Gospel of Matthew that Blake is indebted. He considers forgiveness of sins as the heart of the gospel in his marginal comments to Watson’s ‘Apology’ (E619), but this particular theme is otherwise more prominent in his later work. Nevertheless, the concern to recognise ‘the other’ is key to Blake throughout his writing. ‘Opposition is true friendship’ (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 20, E42) is another way of speaking about the ‘forgiveness of sins’, for it takes seriously difference, and the need to come to terms with, rather than negate, ‘the other’. The attempt to reconcile ‘two classes of men seeks to destroy existence’, for the problem with ‘Religion’ is that it is ‘an endeavour to reconcile the two’ (MHH 16–17, E40). Uniformity and negation are not about the friendship of opposites but about their denial and homogenisation.

9

Antinomianism, atonement and life in the Divine Body Blake and Paul The impact of the Pauline corpus in the New Testament on Blake’s thought has been a recurring theme in this book. We have seen Blake’s deep-seated antipathy to a religion of law and moral virtues. He is part of a long tradition of ambivalence about assent to a written code and the preference for the indwelling Spirit as a source of theological insight. We saw in the first of the Job engravings that Blake quoted two verses from Paul’s letters (2 Cor 3:6 and 1 Cor 2:14) in a central place in his initial image. Blake’s antipathy to devotion to a Bible or sacred code has its origin in the Pauline corpus, where one theme is that with the coming of Christ the dispensation of the Law is past (Rom 10:4) and the era of the Spirit has arrived. In the last chapter we saw how in interpreting the story of the Woman taken in Adultery (John 8:2–11) in ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ Blake turned to a passage from the Letter to the Colossians in order to elucidate the process of redemption and conversion which Mary had experienced. Blake espoused what might be termed an inclusive version of the Body of Christ doctrine in which redemption is the recognition of the fact that one was already as a human being part of the divine body and in this space has the awareness to practise forgiveness of sins and the annihilation of selfhood. In this he was indebted to parts of the New Testament, including the Pauline corpus. These themes are explored in this chapter. There will be an attempt to elucidate the nature of antinomianism and, by reference to Blake’s short drama The Ghost of Abel, an exploration of his antipathy to doctrines of the atonement which see Christ’s death as a satisfaction for sin. Finally, we shall study the contribution of Paul’s image of the Body of Christ and its role in the exploration of the divine life in humanity. The Apostle Paul and William Blake have one important feature of their thought in common, namely, the fundamental role that visions played in their life and work (e.g. Gal 1:12 and 16; cf. 2 Cor 12:2–4; Gooder 2006; Segal 1990; Ashton 2000; Shantz 2009; Rowland and Morray-Jones 2009: 341–420). Paul was not primarily an interpreter of the Bible; he was, rather, a mystic whose sense of his communion

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with the heavenly world made him a broker of the divine mysteries (1 Cor 4:1; Rom 11:25; 16:25; 1 Cor 15:51; cf. 1 Enoch 12–13; Rowland and Morray-Jones 2009: 33–62). One cannot read 1 Cor 2:10–16 without realising that the interpretation of the Bible is ancillary to the convictions provided by the divine Spirit, which offered the basis for Paul’s authority to speak and act as an apostle, or agent, of the heavenly Christ. Paul was a broker of the divine mysteries and could as a result interpret the Jewish scriptures aright (2 Corinthians 3). THE LAW

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MOSES

AND ANTINOMIANISM

The Jewish Scriptures were read by Paul in the light of the newly dawned age of the Spirit. Christians in Corinth were told that passages in the Bible were in reality addressed directly to those fortunate to be alive at this decisive moment in history: ‘Now these things happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come’ (1 Cor 10:11). For Paul the present had become a time of fulfilment: ‘Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation’ (2 Cor 6:2). Paul’s visionary experience laid the foundation for his belief that the position of the Law of Moses had changed in the divine economy now that the messianic age had dawned. He seems to have abandoned the practice of Judaism, except occasionally on pragmatic grounds (1 Cor 9:20; cf. Acts 21:21–3, when, suspected of antinomianism, he is required to demonstrate that he is a faithful Jew). Interpretation of the Law and the application of it to the everyday situations which confront the individual is not the approach Paul the Christian adopted in his letters (Bockmuehl 2000). There are, however, many indications that he set himself up as a quasi-rabbi whose words and example should be heeded. Pauline Christianity and the bulk of contemporary Judaism parted company over whether or not it was possible to have an interpretation of Judaism without accepting the literal implementation of all the laws (e.g. circumcision) for matters of belief rather than use it as a general guide for life, as Paul seems to suggest in Romans 15:4 (Segal 1990): For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

In the letters of Paul, Christ is the end of the Law for all who have faith (Rom 10:4). Much ink has been spilt over the meaning of these words. Did Paul think that Christ in some sense abolished the Law, or is he teaching fulfilment of the Law of Moses in Christ? Most commentators tend to choose the latter view, and

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this seems to fit the evidence of the letters themselves. There is an ongoing debate about whether Paul’s understanding of the Law is consistent (Raisänen 1983; Sanders 1977). The Pauline texts are ambiguous, and the interpreter has to work quite hard to find consistency in them on the subject of Paul’s attitude to the Law of Moses. Despite his strong language in Galatians, Paul wants to guarantee the central importance of the Law of Moses, but now as witness to the messianic salvation. The Law did not, after all, exist from the beginning of creation (Rom 5:13), but only came later, to highlight sin in its true colours (Rom 5:20; cf. Gal 3:19). It was not itself the means of righteousness, nor did it give life (Gal 3:21), though it bore witness to the righteousness of God, which comes through faith in Christ (Rom 3:21; cf. John 5:46). Even if Paul was opposed to the written law as the definitive embodiment of God’s saving purposes (cf. 2 Cor 3:6–16), he was not an antinomian in the sense that he was opposed to moral discipline in the life of believers (Rom 6:1). It is true that Paul seems to go out of his way to deny that he is antinomian: ‘the law is holy, just and good’ (Rom 7:12), and elsewhere, he seems to be answering the criticisms of those who suspected him of antinomianism (Rom 3: 31). We find Paul referring his readers to commands of the Lord, lists of vices, and even resorting to the Law as an authoritative source (as in Rom 13:8–10). The new life in Christ will mean that those who participate in it will walk in newness of life (Rom 6:4). What is involved in this newness is never spelt out in detail, even if passages like Galatians 6:2; 1 Corinthians 9:21 and Romans 8:4, all indicate that Christians are under obligation to fulfil ‘the law of Christ’ (Gal 6:2; cf. Rom 8:2; 1 Cor 9:20–1), or the obligation to love one’s neighbour (Gal 5:14), the latter being the fulfilling of the whole Law (Rom 13:9). However much he may have protested to the contrary, there is little doubt that Paul removed obedience to the Law of Moses from being a central feature of the identity of those communities he set up. At least in a weak sense, therefore, Paul may be considered antinomian, even if he would have had no truck with the antinomianism of those who would sin more in order that grace might abound (Rom 6:1; on such groups see Morton 1958; Hill 1972; Rix 2007: 19–25; Nuttall 2003: 218–24; and on such movements in mystical Judaism, Scholem 1955). Like Blake, Paul seems to have had a very ambiguous relationship with authoritative texts. Debates about antinomianism have a long history, but they became an explicit part of theological vocabulary with the dispute between Luther and Johannes Agricola in the 1530s. Blake’s muse, Milton, while speaking dismissively of the ‘sort of men who follow Anabaptism, Familism, Antinomianism, and other fanatic dreams’, goes on to wonder perceptively whether antinomianism proceeds ‘partly,

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if not chiefly, from the restraint of some lawful liberty which ought to be given Men, and is deny’d them’ (On Divorce, 14). Early seventeenth-century antinomianism was represented by a spectrum of beliefs. At one end were Familist beliefs, characterised by an allegorical approach to the Bible, the application of biblical figures to the transformation of the individual in the present, a conviction that resurrection-life is to be enjoyed here and now, and the idea that true believers merged with God. By virtue of this, Christian believers could enjoy the perfection before the Fall and thus be free from law and sin. At the other end, there was a radical Calvinism with a stress on human sinfulness, but with salvation through grace coming from Christ’s sacrifice on the cross so that believers became perfect before God. So, believers were not inherently pure but became thus as a result of the imputation of Christ’s holiness. David Como in Blown by the Spirit describes the two types of antinomianism as ‘perfectionist’ and ‘imputative’ (Como 2004: 38–40; also Thompson 1993; also Morton 1958; Ferber 1985: 116–30). Application of Como’s typology to the New Testament and early Christianity suggests that perfectionist belief corresponds to key Pauline passages like 1 Corinthians 2 and Romans 8, whereas imputative belief is closer to the position that Paul wishes to deny in Romans 6:1–2 (cf. 2 Cor 5:21). Como’s categories could be extended as follows: ANTINOMIANISM: Scriptures fulfilled and so not having any significant continuing effect and thus rendered obsolete (e.g. Hebrews, Epistle of Barnabas, ‘Zion’ Ward)

Knowing one is saved; no concern about how one behaves (a position rejected in Romans 6:1–2)

Rejection of the moral law as the institution of an inferior being as contrary to the way of life of a higher divinity (a consequence of ‘gnostic’ theological dualism)

A POSSIBLE TYPOLOGY

Impetus for the life of righteousness comes from the Spirit within, but this is given in order to ensure obedience to the commandments of God (Romans 8:3 and Ezekiel 36:25–7; Jeremiah 31:31–4 which is quoted in Hebrews 9:15–16).

Impetus for the life of righteousness comes from the Spirit within, not from obedience to any external authority (a version of Pauline ethics based on the theology of 1 Cor 2:10–16)

Indwelt by or identified with the divine, one has no need of external direction because one’s life is wholly directed by the divine (a radical version of type 3, inspired by Gal 2:20?)

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Being in the second category would mean knowing that one is saved and therefore having no concern about how one behaves (a position rejected in Romans 6:1–2). The third involves rejection of the moral law as an obligation demanded by an inferior divinity, being contrary to the way of life of a higher divinity (a consequence of ‘gnostic’ theological dualism, the position alleged to have been held by Marcion and found in Valentinian documents, Moll 2010). Fourthly, the impetus for the life of righteousness comes from the Spirit of God within, but that indwelling spirit enables the believer to achieve obedience to the commandments of God (Romans 8:3 and Ezekiel 36:25–8). Fifthly, the impetus for the life of righteousness comes from the Spirit within rather than obedience to any external authority, but no reference is made to any law which the Spirit enables the believer to keep (a version of Pauline ethics based on 1 Cor 2:10–16). In this typology a distinction is made between 1 Corinthians 2 and Romans 8. They are superficially similar but on closer inspection perhaps ought to be separated, with the latter more explicitly stating that it enables obedience to a ‘law’, even if it is the Law of Christ. Finally, being indwelt by, or being in some other way identified with the divine, means that there is no need of any external directive for behaviour, because how one lives is according to the divine impulse (a radical version of type 4, inspired by Gal 2:20?). One of the most striking passages in the Pauline corpus is 1 Corinthians 2:10–16, not surprisingly a favourite of the antinomians. Here the internally driven knowledge of God is the appropriate motor to live in the divine life. This passage is one which we have had cause to mention on several occasions (partially quoted in the first of the Blake Job engravings: ‘it is spiritually discerned’, 1 Cor 2:14). What is most extraordinary about it, however, is how it fits with the rest of 1 Corinthians, which exhibits a very different ethos. Why do those who are taught by the Spirit require Paul, or anyone else, to teach them, as they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny (1 Cor 2:15)? Why does Paul write so eloquently about the guidance of the Spirit and yet, out of the blue, offer his stern advice in 1 Corinthians 5 (and indeed in the following chapters) about how to treat one whom he believes to be a wrongdoer? As far as one can ascertain, the problem mentioned in 1 Cor 5:1–5 does not seem to have been a problem for the Corinthians who have asked Paul’s advice (this may have come from Chloe’s people or the household of Stephanas, cf. 1 Cor 7:1; 16:15). In 1 Corinthians 5 Paul betrays his continuing Jewish theological and cultural assumptions as he questions the spiritual character of the Corinthians (3:1). Leviticus 18:8 is alluded to in 5:1 (‘You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife; it is the nakedness of your father’) and Deuteronomy 17:7 is alluded

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to at the end of the chapter. The ‘quotation’ of Deuteronomy in 1 Cor 5:13 (if that is the right way of describing it) has become part of Paul’s rhetorical exposition, as Paul seems to want the Corinthians to see themselves as in some kind of relationship with the biblical traditions, hence the ‘Passover’ allusions in 1 Cor 5:6–8. In the opening verses of 1 Cor 5, we find Paul uttering things which would be ethical commonplace for Hellenistic Judaism, apparently assuming that the recipients of his letter would have shared his assumptions and shocked that they do not. Not to put too fine a point on it, Paul presses the panic button of his cultural prejudices and it is hard to see how this relates to his powerful evocation of life in the Spirit, which he nowhere denies that the Corinthians also share. Elsewhere in the New Testament, Jesus was remembered by the early Christians not as a law-observant Jew, whether or not this memory was true of the historical Jesus. Thus, according to Mark, Jesus declared ‘all foods clean’ (Mark 7:19) and died as a transgressor against the law, being found guilty of blasphemy (Mark 14:64), though Mark would probably have questioned the appropriateness of the charge of ‘blasphemy’. Of course, there are counterexamples in Mark. Thus, in Mark 2:23, it is the disciples, not Jesus who pick the heads of grain, and even 7:19 is never applied to Jesus in action. The historicity of Mark’s account is less important for our purposes than the fact that early Christians told a story of Jesus as an offender against the law (one which got watered down, of course, in Luke-Acts, where Stephen in Acts 6–7 is viewed as a transgressor against the Law, 6:11). Traces of antinomianism have been seen in the tradition (the Q source) that may have been a source for both Luke and Matthew. Luke 16:16 (cf. Matt 11:13) seems to suggest that the era of the Law has come to an end and a new dispensation has begun. The sayings in Luke 16:16–18 come at different points in Matthew (Matt 11:12–13, Matt 5:32 and 5:18). There is a statement in Luke 16:16 that in some sense the Law has ended, but the following saying in 16:17 has the effect of modifying this. A new era may be here but the law is still in force. So the second saying is a redaction of the first unqualified statement (Tuckett 1996: 407). It is likely that the ongoing history of the gospel tradition represents an attempt to deal with the problems of antinomian interpretation such as we have seen in 1 Corinthians. Even more strikingly in the Gospel of John, the Johannine Jesus is one who seems willing to flout the Law, impelled by some higher call. This appeal to a higher authority becomes the criterion for his action, not the Law of Moses. The Johannine Jesus claims to offer revelation of God (in his person) and also in his words – from what he has seen and heard in heaven. There is an authority

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independent of previous tradition, as John 1:17 hints: ‘grace and truth came through Jesus Christ’. The law which came through Moses becomes part of the testimony, along with the words of John the Baptist and the deeds or signs of Jesus (5:46). While there is a justification of Sabbath contravention by scripture in John 7:23, and, by reference to God’s ongoing action, Sabbath included, in John 5:17, the narrative about Jesus portrays him as one who breaks the Sabbath law in order to heal, most especially in John 9:14. The editorial addition in John 5:18 indicates that the problem was not only Sabbath breaking, but that Jesus made himself equal with God ( Jn 5:18; cf. 10:33). Although the blasphemy charge is not part of the Jewish hearing in the Gospel of John, transgression against the law does come up in the hearing before Pilate ( Jn 18:30; 19:7). Jesus claims not to have spoken on his own authority, for ‘the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I speak, therefore I speak just as the Father has told me’ ( John 12:49–50, NRSV translation). John presents Jesus as the giver of a new commandment, related to friendship (‘that you love each other’, John 13:34). In sum, antinomian statements/tendencies were a crucial part of the particular form of the interpretation of the Jewish traditions which came to be known as Christianity (Smith 1973; Stroumsa 2008; and on antinomianism in Judaism Scholem 1955 and 1973). The new sect rejected some Jewish laws, for example those regarding circumcision and the Sabbath, and differed from other forms of Judaism in having a relatively lax attitude towards the law in general. It is possible that some of these changes could be understood as the kind of legal (halakhic) judgements that Jewish teachers made in response to altered context as the followers of Christ moved out of the Jewish ambit in which such disregard would be interpreted as antinomian. One cannot understand the fabric of Christian theology and ethics unless one grasps the significant role that antinomian elements play in both the New Testament writings and in the history of Christianity. Antinomianism is the other side of the coin from eschatology, the eager expectation of God’s future kingdom on earth. The two together are the key to comprehend the motor of novelty which is at the heart of early Christian identity. They help us to see why early Christian writers relativised the past and the place of the Bible and tradition in the light of their eschatological convictions, experience and the new ethical possibilities that they engendered.1 Antinomianism is a very blunt analytical instrument for understanding such a complex phenomenon, it is true. There are different types of ethical response characterised by a common initial move – stimulus from the internal rather than the external – and a consequent playing down of the position of law. Readings

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of the internalisation of the law in accordance with, for example, Jeremiah 31/Ezekiel 36, mean a transition from heteronomy to autonomy. It is not that there is an absence of law (nomos) but that law-abiding behaviour is not prescribed by an external code. Those to whom we loosely apply the term ‘antinomian’, if they have a true sense of the divine dwelling within, will act morally from what Blake called ‘impulse not from rules’. Winstanley put the question very succinctly: But first of all, what is the righteous Law here to be understood? I answer; It is not the words of the letter, called the ten Commandments, and therein onely bound up; But it is the manifestation of God in all, or any one of his Attributes, shining forth upon, and in his creature, endeavouring by his spirituall power to swallow up all the motions and imaginations of the flesh into God. (The Saints Paradice, Ch. III, CHL i.331)

THE CROSS One area where at first sight there seems to be a clear difference between Blake and parts of the New Testament is the doctrine of the atonement. Blake was resolutely opposed to an interpretation of the death of Christ in which the sacrifice for sin was to appease an angry God, or to satisfy the just requirement of abstract divine laws. The difference from Paul is more apparent than real, however. Blake’s opposition to the payment of a price in blood as the means of dealing with humanity’s debt to God is stated in Jerusalem 61 where, as we have seen, he uses his reading of the Infancy story in Matthew 1 to explore Joseph’s gradual recognition that forgiveness of sins is without money and without price. The god of this world, however, requires human sacrifice: ‘Jesus died because he strove/Against the current of this Wheel [Religion], its Name/Is Caiaphas, the dark Preacher of Death/Of sin, of sorrow, & of punishment:/ Opposing Nature! It is Natural Religion/But Jesus is the bright Preacher of Life/Creating Nature from this fiery Law,/By self-denial & forgiveness of Sin’ ( J77:16–21, E232). Blake rejects the message which is to be found in Romans 3:24–5: ‘Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood’. But, as commentators have pointed out, the sentiments of this verse are in fact not frequent in the Pauline corpus (the Letter to the Hebrews excepted).

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Just as redemption for Blake was located primarily in the annihilation of selfhood ( J5:22, E147), with selfhood encouraging a religion of ‘Laws of Sacrifice for Sin’ and ‘Laws of Chastity & Abhorrence’ (J49:24–6, E198), so at the heart of Paul’s understanding of atonement is the belief that identification of the believer with Christ’s death marks the end of one era in the life and the beginning of another. In fact, Blake picks up this significant thread in the Pauline understanding of the death of Christ, such as we find in Romans 6:4; Col 2:10–15 (cf. Ephes 2:13–16). ‘To Annihilate the Selfhood of Deceit and False Forgiveness’ (Milton, Plate 15) is an entirely plausible gloss on what we find in these key Pauline passages. As we have seen already (p. 189 above), Blake’s understanding of redemption has affinities with both Romans 6:1–4 and Colossians 2:11–12, where putting off the body of flesh is closely linked with a new perspective on, and a new way of, life. For the one who has faith there is a new creation because the old attitudes have been abolished and new insight has come: ‘if any one is in Christ there is a new creation’ (2 Cor 5:17 NRSV; Martyn 1967 and 1985). In Colossians 3:1 resurrection is not something wholly of the future, but a symbol of present selfannihilation. Eschatological transformation remains an ever-present possibility. Blake explores, and challenges, the problem of the satisfaction theory of the atonement in his drama, The Ghost of Abel (1822, E270–2). He rarely described what he wrote as an apocalypse. The words ‘A Revelation In the Visions of Jehovah’ are, however, found at the beginning of this work. His intention in writing it was to address Lord Byron, whose Cain: a Mystery was considered by the Establishment to be a threat to public morals; its publication had led to a hostile reaction to Byron. It is possible that The Ghost of Abel is a challenge as well as a support, in that Blake implicitly questions Byron’s rejection of the doctrine of life after death in the Old Testament (evident in the words ‘yet Jehovah sees him Alive & not Dead: were it not better to believe Vision With all our might & strength tho we are fallen & lost’, Ghost, 2:2, E271). Whatever differences there may have been between Blake and Byron on theology, however, Blake encourages Byron to share with him (Blake) the life of the imagination and join the true prophets like Elijah (and indeed, Blake himself), as a voice of one crying in the wilderness (cf. the opening of All Religions are One, E1, where the words from Isa 40:3 are quoted as also in Matt 3:3). The Ghost of Abel describes the situation in the aftermath of the Genesis version of the Fall. There are pictorial allusions to Genesis 3 in the marginal illustrations, in one of which the Serpent surrounds the tree. But the interpretation of Genesis 3 is hardly the major point of this short piece, except in so far as the totality of the Adam and Eve story gets played out in acts of violence. The reparation for Abel’s blood provides a trigger for the critique of the religion of

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vengeance, ‘life for life’ (Exod 21:23), and the consequent effects in human society, leading to a culture of human sacrifice (Ghost, 2:16–21, E272). Throughout the drama there are puns on Abel (vain, illusion), indicating that Abel is not a hero in the story and demonstrating also Blake’s awareness of the meaning of the Hebrew. God rejects the demand for vengeance, as this would mean perpetuating an unending cycle of vengeance (‘He who shall take Cains life must also Die’, E271). Abel continues to protest and asserts that Satan, ‘the Accuser’ has entered into him. Satan, the ‘god of this age’ (cf. 2 Cor 4:4), becomes the spokesman for Abel and reveals that sacrifice is the heart of the religion of the divinities of the nations who demand human sacrifice (the ‘Elohim’, E272). Satan demands vengeance by the death of God as the necessary satisfaction. This seems, at first sight, to be accepted (Paley 2003: 217). Jehovah’s ‘Lo I have given you a Lamb for an Atonement instead Of the Transgres[s]or’, and later, the divine ‘Such is my will’ appear to acquiesce in the requirement that a substitutionary death be exacted (echoing sentiments in the New Testament that the death of Christ was eternally planned, 1 Peter 1:19–20; cf. Rev 13:8). This promise is refused and the demand for vengeance is continued by Satan. The death of the lamb of God only seems to be the price that has to be paid to Satan and the Elohim. Yet, as in 1 Cor 2:9 (picking up one aspect of the early Christian ‘Christus Victor’ doctrine, Aulen 1935), what appears to be a sacrifice to buy off Satan turns out to be the moment of defeat of Satan and the Elohim, the gods of the heathen. The pronouncement of the divine will (attended as it is by apocalyptic thunders) turns out not to be acquiescence but rather to signal ‘Eternal Death in Self Annihilation’ for Satan (2:20, E272). Or, as Blake puts it elsewhere, it is the judgement, the moment of the opportunity for the overcoming of selfhood, which is not some future penalty but a present cathartic possibility. It is nothing less than a process of renewal, which Blake depicts in his ‘Last Judgment’ by the descent and ascent of persons through their hell to new life (see below, p. 228). Blake echoes a Johannine theme that judgement is not some future moment but an ever-present possibility of renewal, assisted by the pedagogical effect of his illuminated books. The true covenant is not one based on justice but on mercy and the forgiveness of sins. Jehovah understands the death of Jesus as a sign of true brotherhood (cf. Jerusalem 96:27, E256; John 15:13). The chorus of angels then echoes God’s sentence on Satan to an eternal death in order to bring about his redemption. Finally, Jehovah and Elohim come together at the end of the drama (cf. Jerusalem 61:1–2, E211–12), as mercy and justice complement each other and Elohim Jehovah embraces the contraries of judgement and mercy, and the divinities of the nations unite in one as the

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heathen gods take their proper places as attendants rather than as opponents of the divine mercy (E272). The picture ‘The Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve’ (c. 1805–9; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard, B664, and 1826; Tate Gallery, London, B806) complements The Ghost of Abel. Blake picks up Gen 4:15 (‘And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him’). The mark of Cain becomes a sign of the need for forgiveness and not of condemnation, even though Cain thinks he deserves to die. The red mark on Cain’s head (more apparent in the Tate version, B806) is just visible as Cain clutches his brow. Cain’s role as a sign for the need for forgiveness is seen in the Illustrations of Genesis, where Blake heads the sketch for Genesis 4: ‘How Generation & Death took Possession of the Natural Man & of the Forgiveness of Sins written upon the Murderers Forehead’ (E688). In The Ghost of Abel, Abel, the ‘just one’ of Christian tradition (cf. Matt 23:25; Hebrews 11:4), becomes the spokesman for ‘lex talionis’ justice. THE BODY

OF

CHRIST: LIFE

IN THE

DIVINE BODY

As we have seen in his Job series, Blake espouses an understanding of Christ which resembles Paul’s, in which the historical Jesus of the gospels takes second place to the Christ ‘in whom we live and move and have our being’ (cf. Acts 17:28). Blake seems to have developed a concept of the cosmic Christ as the pedagogic and therapeutic space within which the transformation of society could take place, with Albion as the first fruits of that redemption. Susanne Sklar (2007) has offered a way of understanding Blake’s Jerusalem as a text that seeks to effect aesthetic and ethical change through readers’ ability to identify with the characters and their fluctuating characteristics. Sklar suggests that Blake takes his inspiration from themes about the cosmic Body of Christ found in a text like Ephesians to produce a pedagogy of spiritual, ethical, and (differing from Ephesians) social transformation. In the interaction with different figures in Jerusalem there may be a development of the understanding of those who engage with it. The imaginative space in which this happens is described by Blake as ‘The Divine Body’ (Laocoön, E273, Roberts, 2003): The Eternal Body of Man is The Imagination. that is God himself The Divine Body

}

Jesus we are his Members

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‘Divine body’ also occurs occasionally in Jerusalem (J3, E145; 5:59, E148; 24:23, E169; 37/33:11, E179; 60:57, E211; 74:13, E229). Sklar argues that the image recurs, metonymically and by means of synecdoche. Albion (J24:23) and Jerusalem ( J60:57) also equate the human imagination with the Divine Body, which can be called ‘the Divine Vision’ ( J29:1, E175; 32:56, E179; 42:7, E189; 54:32, E204; 71:59, E226). This means that participation in the Divine Body is integral to what Jerusalem is about. On the very first page of the text ( J3, E145) Blake explains that he wants readers to be ‘wholly One in Jesus our Lord’ in a spirit of ‘continual forgiveness’. Readers are summoned to enter ‘the Saviour’s Kingdom, the Divine Body’. The purpose of Jerusalem is explained as being ‘to open the immortal Eyes/Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity/Ever expanding in the Bosom of God. the Human Imagination’ ( J5:16–20, E147). Thereby Blake’s readers may see that they inhabit and are animated by the Divine Body. Blake linked the Divine Body with the life of the imagination. The intellectual activity stimulated by the imagination enabled one to become aware of the extent to which conformity to convention could quench the life of the Spirit. Blake’s understanding of life in the Divine Body is indebted to Pauline understanding of the Body of Christ (an image used in 1 Cor 6 and 12 and Romans 12 as well as expanded on in the Letters to the Ephesians and Colossians). What characterises this life is summed up in a theme from the gospels: the forgiveness of sins, which Blake identifies with the wine and bread in the following words: & Throughout all Eternity I forgive you you forgive me As our dear Redeemer said This the Wine & this the Bread (E477)

The Divine Body of Jesus (also called ‘the Human Form Divine’) encompasses all ( J99:1–4, E258), and, via the hermeneutical space it affords, readers may discover their participation in the Divine Body: ‘O Human Imagination O Divine Body’, Blake’s Albion cries in a vision ( J24:23, E169). Albion throws himself ‘into the Furnaces of affliction’ and finds that the consuming fires become ‘Fountains of Living Waters flowing from the Humanity Divine’ ( J96:35–7, E256). As Selfhood is overcome, the Divine Body is revealed ( J96:38–43, E256). Jerusalem, therefore, is about ‘the passage through / Eternal Death! and of the awaking to Eternal Life’ ( J4:1–2, E146). Being in the body of

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Christ means being crucified and rising on a regular basis and practising ‘Continual forgiveness of sins’, ‘the Perpetual Mutual Sacrifice in Great Eternity’ which animates the Divine Body ( J61:22, E212). Forgiveness means seeing the Divine Body ‘before, behind, above, beneath, around’ as the Lord bends ‘the Laws of Cruelty to Peace’ ( J49: 49–55, E199). One of the most remarkable theological developments in the Pauline corpus is the language Paul uses about the Christian’s relationship with Christ (parallel with the notion in the Gospel of John of mutual indwelling, which Blake used in the Job series, especially Engraving 17). Paul uses a variety of different prepositions to characterise the relationship: Christ within himself (Gal 2:20); the Spirit of Christ in the believer (Rom 8:9); and the community as a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 3:16; 6:19). There has been an influential view in New Testament scholarship that we should take Paul’s phrase ‘in Christ’ more literally, as a space within which those who enter can live and breathe. As one commentator on Paul has put it, ‘Paul speaks of Christian life as lived in an area which is Christ’ (Moule 1977: 95; cf. Deissmann 1923: 164–200; Shantz 2009). This may in part coincide with the life in the Christian community, but Ephesians suggests something more cosmic and all-embracing – and it is here that we find a theological interpretation which was deeply attractive to Blake (Lincoln 1981). Thus, in Ephesians 2:1–6 we find a notion, already hinted at in Romans 6:22, of converts to Christianity transferring from one dominion to another and this being viewed in a spatial way as ‘being seated with Christ in the heavenly places’ (‘[he] hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus’, Ephes 2:6; cf. 2:13). Christ is seen as a holy space, a building of which/whom Christians are a part and within which/whom they move: ‘In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit’ (Ephes 2:21–2). Thus, Christ is ‘the head over all things to the church, Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all’ (1:22–3), and it is in Christ ‘That in the dispensation of the fulness of times [God] might gather together in one all things in Christ . . .’ (1:10). There are hints here, as many commentators on Ephesians have noted, of not just the universal church, but also of a wider, cosmic space being the sphere of divine activity. It is as one’s understanding is illumined that one will become aware of one’s true destiny and so cease to be alienated from the life of God because of ignorance and hardness of heart (4:18). Ephesians, therefore, also comes close to regarding salvation as knowledge of that which is actually the case, that one is part of a new humanity in Christ (Ephes 2:15). Christians are pioneers of a

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redeemed creation. They have to ‘grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love’ (4:15–16 NRSV). In Ephesians and Colossians, there is a focus on the church, but there is also a universal dimension, particularly apparent in Colossians 1:15–20, where Christ is not only the source of creation but the one who sustains it (Col 1:17: ‘in him all things hold together’ NRSV). Blake’s notion of the cosmic divine body anticipates discussion of Ephesians in modern biblical scholarship, where it has been suggested that behind the notion of God as cosmic human (Lincoln 1990) there lies an idea which we find variously in both gnostic texts and in the early Jewish mystical sources. In the latter in particular there developed an extraordinary doctrine based on the end of the first chapter of Ezekiel, the merkabah, when the prophet describes briefly the human figure that is seated on the throne above the firmament (Ezek 1:26–7). That description led to speculation about God’s body (shiur qomah) as having incredibly large limbs, exceeding in size the whole world, and, of course, de facto beyond human comprehension (Scholem 1955; Cohen 1983; Schäfer 1992; Rowland and Morray-Jones 2009). Whether Blake would have known at first hand about later versions of this in the Jewish Kabbalah is not clear (cf. Spector 2001: 132–8), though it has been suggested from time to time, especially in the interpretation of Jerusalem (e.g. ‘You have a tradition, that Man anciently containd in his mighty limbs all things in Heaven & Earth’, J27, E171). The body of God includes the whole world. Learning about God is not about assimilating a body of knowledge. It is about relationship and identification, understanding and practice in accord with that of which one is a part, namely, the divine body. This may come about through engagement with the words of the Bible, in which process the Bible turns out to be the gateway of perception and new life. This is what Northrop Frye was getting at in some opaque but very suggestive words: We reach final understanding of the Bible when our imaginations become possessed by the Jesus of the resurrection, the pure community of a divine man, the absolute civilization of the city of God. This Jesus stands just outside the Bible, and to reach him we must crawl through the narrow gap between the end of Revelation and the beginning of Genesis, and then see the entire vision of the Bible below us as a vast cycle of existence from the creation of a fallen world to the recreation of an unfallen one. If we remain inside the gap with the Jesus of

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history, we are still within that cycle, which thereby becomes the circumference of our vision. (Frye 1947: 389)

This seems to be exactly the position which Blake gives Job and his wife as they view the morning stars and Behemoth and Leviathan in the closing scenes of the Job series. The circumference of vision has taken them beyond the Bible and the false ideology which preoccupation with it engenders. BLAKE

AND

PAUL:

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES

When Blake mentions Paul explicitly, he considers him the harbinger of Christendom which promoted ‘Religion hid in War’ (M37:41; J75: 16). He resonated with particular strands in the Pauline corpus, from Romans to Ephesians (much less so with the rather didactic letters to Timothy and Titus whose authenticity is now widely denied), especially the importance of the indwelling spirit, the end of the reign of Law, and the space opened up by divine life in Christ as an arena for epistemological and ethical transformation. Unlike Blake, Paul the visionary was involved in community organisation, enabling minority groups to maintain identity and cohesion as they received and lived out his message. This involved pragmatism and compromise. What we have in the Pauline epistles are collections of advice forged in the heat of helping minority groups to survive. Blake does with the Pauline corpus what he does with the Book of Job, grasping the major themes of what he reads and using them as an interpretative lens through which to view the corpus as a whole. Blake engages with Paul critically, as he does with Milton, though without the explicit critique. His imaginative engagement sets up a centrifugal force which thrusts the material he finds less palatable – for example, concerning holiness and Christ’s death as a propitiatory sacrifice – to the periphery, clarifying that which is the focus of his concern. Like many Christian readers before him, Blake picked up on the antinomian strands in Paul’s thought. Like modern biblical scholars who have focused on Paul’s idea of participation in Christ (e.g. Sanders 1977), he considered life in the Divine Body a central feature of Paul’s mature theology. In his emphasis on forgiveness of sins Blake prefers Jesus, and in particular the Gospel of Matthew, where this theme is more prominent. For Blake this is the heart of the gospel. As we have seen, Paul is ambivalent about the continued validity of the Law of Moses. Nowhere is this more evident than in the way in which Old Testament

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views of holiness persist in the Pauline teaching. Paul adopted a pattern of religion that was basically the same as Judaism. This involved separation, and a view of holiness, very much akin to Judaism though with a different rationale, which meant that the Christian groups and individuals, in their relations with wider society, presented a similar kind of façade to their non-Christian neighbours. It is little surprise, therefore, that outsiders, at least initially (cf. Acts 18:14–15), found it difficult to tell the difference between Jews and Christians. Even though most Christians dropped adherence to the food laws, circumcision and sabbath observance, the underlying ethos of holiness remained the same as in Judaism. We never find Paul asserting anything akin to Blake’s ‘everything that lives is Holy’ (MHH 27, E45; for the background to Blake’s thought, Makdisi 2003: 245–59). Like other early Christians, Paul may have baulked at the restrictions of access which Temple-based religion demanded, but he transferred that sense of a special place to a group of people (1 Cor 3:16; 6:19). Cultic holiness was now to be found in a group of ‘special’ people, who behaved in special ways, not like the heathen. There is nothing in early critiques of the Temple (with the possible exception of Stephen’s speech in Acts) to suggest that Temple religion is idolatrous. Nothing can compare with the hard-hitting exposure of the compromised nature of Christian worship which we find in ‘A Chapel all of gold’ (E467).2 Blake was fiercely opposed to the idea that church rituals of worship preserve sublimity and sanctity: Let the Priests of the Raven of dawn, no longer in deadly black, with hoarse note curse the sons of joy. Nor his accepted brethren whom, tyrant, he calls free; lay the bound or build the roof. Nor pale religious letchery call that virginity, that wishes but acts not! For every thing that lives is Holy. (MHH, Plate 27, E45)

Thus Blake rejected one of the foundation stones of biblical religion as it is found in both Old and New Testaments, and in subsequent Christian orthodoxy. He redefined holiness in Jerusalem 86:4 (E244), protesting against its cruelties (J68:59, E222) and falsehoods ( J69:40, E223). What is required is to promote friendship through engaging with ‘contraries’, rather than to contrast sacred and profane, pure and impure, inside and outside. For Blake, all things within oneself are potentially a means of discerning eternity, by means of engaging with the ‘contraries’ in the human person, and also the wider world:

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And this is the manner of the Sons of Albion in their strength They take the Two Contraries which are calld Qualities, with which Every Substance is clothed, they name them Good & Evil From them they make an Abstract, which is a Negation Not only of the Substance from which it is derived A murderer of its own Body: but also a murderer Of every Divine Member: it is the Reasoning Power An Abstract objecting power, that Negatives every thing This is the Spectre of Man: the Holy Reasoning Power And in its Holiness is closed the Abomination of Desolation ( J10:7–16, E152–3)

10

Interpreting the Bible through images

‘[The Bible] had always provided the thread of meaning behind [Blake’s] visual imagery’, wrote David Bindman of Blake’s last artistic work (Bindman 1977: 220). From 1799 to 1805 Blake painted two series of biblical subjects for Thomas Butts, a great supporter and friend (Bindman 1977: 115–31), one set of tempera and one of watercolour. They are a remarkable collection of comments on the Bible through the medium of image rather than text. The following chapter falls into two parts, pictures illustrating biblical passages relating to the life and death of Jesus in the first, and then interpretations of passages from the Book of Revelation. In the visual interpretations of the life of Jesus we see Blake attending to the detail of the text (e.g. ‘Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem’) and creatively interpreting the theological potential of the biblical accounts, skilfully merging passages from different parts of the Bible to explore the deeper theological message (for example, in ‘The Nativity’ and ‘Angels hovering over the Body of Jesus in the Sepulchre’). Blake was interested in the theme of the Last Judgment, and we shall consider one of the extant versions of his treatment of this subject. As a coda, there is a discussion of an early picture, known as ‘The Allegory of the Bible’, which encapsulates a theme running through this book: the problem posed for Blake by ‘all Bibles or sacred codes’. SCENES

FROM THE LIFE AND DEATH OF

JESUS

‘The Nativity’ This extraordinary picture (1799–1800; Philadelphia Museum of Art, B401) has taxed the ingenuity of interpreters. Its motifs, according to Bindman, are ‘apparently unique in European art’ (1977: 121).1 It shows a man supporting a swooning woman on the left, while to the right is an elderly woman with a child on her lap. Between the two women is a celestial infant, with arms outstretched,

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floating between them, very small (note the infant’s size in comparison with the elderly woman’s hands). Above them is a window through which there is a heavenly, cross-shaped, light. It is presumably a Nativity scene – evidenced by the oxen and the manger in the background, with Joseph supporting a swooning Mary. The problem of identifying the characters, the peculiar position of the Christ-child, as well as understanding the meaning of the painting, make this one of Blake’s most mysterious paintings – another ‘Mystic Nativity’, to quote the title of Botticelli’s equally puzzling painting (c. 1500; National Gallery, London), which is similar in its theological complexity. The identification of the characters would appear to be based on Luke’s account of the Nativity (Luke 2:6–7), with the passage Luke 1:39–44 providing the clue to the older woman with the child on her lap (Elizabeth, according to Luke 1:7, was ‘well stricken in years’). Blake indicates elsewhere, in a caption, that he regards the ‘Holy Family’ as including the family of John the Baptist: ‘Holy Family consisting of Mary Joseph John the Baptist Zacharias & Elizabeth recieving the Bread & Wine among other Spirits of the Just’, ‘A Vision of the Last Judgment’ (E562). A companion to ‘The Nativity’, almost certainly, was ‘The Adoration of the Kings’ (1799; Brighton Art Gallery, B402), but here we find a much more conventional nativity scene, with none of the peculiarities of ‘The Nativity’. In ‘Zacharias and Gabriel’ (Luke 1:11–13; 1799–1800; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, B400) we have the heavenly light at the centre of the picture, as in ‘The Nativity’, with Gabriel pointing towards it watched by a rather sceptical and defensive Zacharias. Most relevant for interpreting ‘The Nativity’ is ‘The Descent of Peace’ from the series which Blake painted illustrating Milton’s ‘Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ (Six Illustrations to Milton’s ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’, c. 1815; Huntington Library, B542 1; and Whitworth Gallery, Manchester B538 1). In the Huntington Library version we have a similar depiction to that in ‘The Nativity’, though the positions of the two women in the picture are reversed. The representation of the floating Christ-child in ‘The Descent of Peace’ is much larger, but still hovering between the two women, interpreting the words ‘Sent down the meek-eyd Peace’ (stanza 3), being the peace which is inaugurated between heaven and earth and between one human and another. The difference in the size of the two children in ‘The Nativity’ and in ‘The Descent of Peace’ is striking, but readily explicable on the basis of difference in age. More noteworthy are the ruddy features of the child on Elizabeth’s lap, which contrast with those of the tiny radiant child floating between the two women. If the former is the infant John, a passage like Luke 7:28 springs to mind (‘Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the

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Baptist’). The extraordinary airborne position of the celestial child, who floods the stable with light, is reminiscent of some lines from Blake’s poem ‘Infant Sorrow’ from Songs of Experience: My mother groand! my father wept. Into the dangerous world I leapt: Helpless, naked, piping loud; Like a fiend hid in a cloud. (E28, so also Bindman 1977: 122, who in addition compares the birth of ‘the secret child’ in Plate 3 of Europe, E61)

‘Fiend’ is not an obvious word that Blake would use to describe the heavenly Christ, and so the words from ‘Infant Sorrow’ may caution us not to read too much into the image in ‘The Nativity’, in the light of the all too ‘down to earth scene’ depicted in ‘Infant Sorrow’. There are antecedents for the tiny flying child, including those which may be found in the central panel of ‘The Annunciation Triptych’ by Robert Campin and workshop, known as the ‘Merode Altarpiece’ (c. 1425–30; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), in the right-hand panel of the Middelburg altarpiece by Rogier van der Weyden (1445–8; Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), and in the probably incomplete Master Bertram Altarpiece (c. 1400; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Kauffmann 1968). They are not exact: the Campin child holds a cross, the child in the Bertram Altarpiece is considerably more substantial.2 With regard to the shaft of light in the stable, it is possible that Blake might have read The Protoevangelium of James, in which there is a description of the miraculous birth of Mary’s child. A cloud overshadows the cave in which Mary is due to give birth and, after its disappearance, a great light shines in the cave. Upon this fading, the infant Jesus suddenly appears and goes to take the breast from Mary (Protoevangelium of James 19:2; cf. The Ascension of Isaiah 11:7–14, translation Hennecke 1965, ii: 661). The Protoevangelium was available in English translation from 1726 in Jeremiah Jones’s A new and full method of settling canonical authority of the New Testament. A new edition was published in 1798 and reissued by William Hone in 1820 (though it does not appear to have been in William Hayley’s library to which Blake had access, Munby 1971).3 The most plausible interpretation of this image is that the infant Christ is here an intermediary linking, and embracing, humans. At the start of Jerusalem ( J4:6–8, E146), Christ addresses the poet in words which conflate Ephesians 5: 14 and John 14:20 (the last mentioned passage found in Engraving 17 of the

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Job series): ‘Awake! Awake O sleeper of the land of shadows, wake! expand!/I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine:/Fibres of love from man to man thro Albions pleasant land.’ What Blake seems to depict here is more than an evocation of the humble situation of Jesus’ birth: Mary gives birth to the cosmic Christ, indwelling within her, as, indeed, he indwells within every person. She is overwhelmed by the physical and mental strain of giving birth to a Christ who is the bond of peace and a bond that binds humanity together (represented here by the two women). ‘The Baptism’ Matthew 3:13–17; Mark 1:9–11; Luke 3:21–2; John 1:29–34 Blake depicted this subject several times (B415; B475; cf. B544 1, the first illustration of Milton’s Paradise Regained). The version discussed here is B475 (c. 1803; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), which includes the heavenly vision of witnessing angels and on which is inscribed ‘This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased’ and ‘Matt ch: 3rd v. 16th’. Despite the inscription ‘Matt 3:16’, Blake portrays the Baptist with his eyes focused on heaven and the descending dove, which seems to follow the account in the Gospel of John, with a Lucan element as well (Luke 3:22). In John’s version of the event the visionary experience is vouchsafed to the Baptist, not to Jesus ( John 1:33–4): ‘And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God.’ ‘The Transfiguration’ Matthew 17:1–9; Mark 9:2–8; Luke 9:28–36 In ‘The Transfiguration’ (c. 1800; Victoria and Albert Museum, B484; with Luke 9:30 inscribed on the mount) there is a sharing of the divine glory (cf. 2 Cor 3:18), with the disciples being enfolded by the hem of Jesus’ garment. Behind Jesus, Moses and Elijah are shadowy figures, perhaps the ancestors.4 We find the presence of similar figures in Solomon exercising judgment over the maternity of the living child (the picture of ‘The Judgment of Solomon’, 1799–1800; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, B392), an episode described in 1 Kings 3:16–28. Here, the figures standing on either side of Solomon look in opposite directions, while Solomon’s eyes are on the natural mother. He points to her with one hand while with the other he seems to prevent the death of the

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child. The company of shadowy figures may represent the wisdom of tradition surrounding the king, but he has to make up his own mind – the shadowy figures being equally divided on either side of him. Another picture by Blake in which we find elements of ‘The Transfiguration’ is ‘The Conversion of Saul’ (c. 1800; Huntington Library, B506, inscribed Acts IX c. 6 v.), where there is a similar diffusion of divine glory and the presence of what seem to be heavenly figures. The inscription tells us that this image is a commentary on Acts 9:6: ‘Rise and enter the city and you will be told what you are to do’. Saul’s raiment is touched by the yellow of the heavenly Christ; Christ is surrounded in a whirl of light by other figures, either the heavenly host as in Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4–5, or the Christians with whom Christ is linked, whom Saul is persecuting (Acts 9:4). ‘Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem’ Matthew 21:1–16 This image (1800; Pollok House, Glasgow, B422) is inspired by Matthew’s version of the event (Matt 21:6–9, 14–16). Evidence for this can be seen in the prominent place given to children in the picture – a ‘children’s crusade’ (Bindman 1977: 124). Jerusalem is seen in the far distance. Blake has linked 21:9 and 21:15, so that the cry of Hosanna in the Temple is now linked with the cry which the crowds made when Jesus entered the city (as here depicted). It is the children (21:15) who lead the acclamation. In Matthew’s version it is the children along with the physically impaired who greet Christ in the Temple: And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them. And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the son of David; they were sore displeased, And said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise? (Matt 21:14–16)

As we have seen, in his response to the Reverend Dr Trusler, who wanted Blake to explain his pictures, Blake considered ‘a vast Majority [of children to be] on the side of Imagination or Spiritual Sensation’ (‘Letter to Trusler’, E703). His attitude reflects the emphasis on the importance of children found in the Synoptic Gospels, especially in the Gospel of Matthew (11:25; 18:2–3, 10; 19:13–15).

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One of the most striking things about ‘Christ’s Entry’ is Blake’s depiction of the children. Not only do they surround Jesus, while the adult disciples (men and women) follow behind, but they appear to be children who have the demeanour of adults. It is as if Blake has depicted child-like adults, those who have taken a greater delight in Christ and ‘can Elucidate’ the divine ‘Vision’ that is in their midst. The children, mainly tiny of stature, would thus be representatives of the world of imaginative thought and understanding. Iconographically, these figures have the marks of true adulthood in their acknowledgement and following of Jesus. The pious devotion of the ‘adult’ figures, hands in an attitude of prayer, contrasts with the enthusiasm of the child figures, surrounding Jesus and populating the trees, who have palm branches in their hands like the great multitude in Revelation 7:9. There, too, the cry is ‘Salvation’, the meaning of ‘Hosanna’ in Matthew 21:9 and 15. The sky is filled with the red sun. The redness is from the setting sun, but, as in the first of the Job sequence, it may also mark the end of an era for the city which is depicted on the left of the picture. This is most likely in view of the setting of the story in the canonical gospels: immediately before the last week of Jesus’ life. The ruddy hue pervades the whole of the picture. Just as the brightness of the glory of Jesus in Blake’s ‘Transfiguration’ envelops the disciples, so here the events which are to come include those who surround Jesus. ‘Canst thou drink of the cup which I am to drink?’ asks Jesus in Mark 10:39–40 (cf. Matt 20:22–3). At this moment the disciples, children and adults, may be expected to do just that. The welcome of the children as Christ enters Jerusalem mirrors the welcome Christ has given to children earlier in the gospel (Matt 19:13–14), the subject of Blake’s ‘Christ blessing the Little Children’ (1799; Tate Gallery, London, B419). Although Christ seems to be detached, rather than involved, there is no sense of a barrier between him and the children, who are gathered up into his arms, perhaps echoing Isaiah 40:11 (‘He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young’). ‘The Death and Burial of Jesus’ Matthew 27:35–38; Mark 15:23–6, 33–35; John 19:23–4 One of Blake’s depictions of the death of Jesus, ‘The Soldiers casting Lots for Christ’s Garments’ (1800; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, B495, inscribed ‘John XIX c. 23 & 24’), does not show the crucified Christ at all but foregrounds the all too human behaviour of the soldiers casting lots over Jesus’ garment.

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Plate 76 from Blake’s Jerusalem (c. 1821;Yale Center for British Art) illustrates Blake’s grasp of Johannine theology. Here Albion (Britain) and Jesus are brought face to face. The radiance proceeding from the crucified Christ touches Albion, who imitates the pose of the crucified Christ. The glory of Christ crucified is an important theme in the Gospel of John (especially Jn 12:33 and 13:31), and this glory Christ shares with those whom the father has given him ( Jn 17:22). On the right and left of the central figures there appear to be fruits hanging from the cross. This reminds one of the tree from which Adam and Eve are commanded not to eat, as found in Blake’s depiction of the ‘Tempting of Eve’ in the Paradise Lost drawings (Museum of Fine Art, Boston, B536 9). The tree on which Jesus hangs redeems the consequences of the tree from which Adam and Eve ate the fruit. In the picture ‘Angels hovering over the Body of Jesus in the Sepulchre’ (c. 1805; Victoria and Albert Museum, B500, inscribed ‘Exod: cXXV v20’; Bindman 1977: 131; Heppner 1995: 197–200) there is an attempt to depict the presence of Christ as a meeting place between human and divine, though this time between humanity and God. The passage, which includes the inscribed Exod 25:20, is as follows: And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat. And make one cherub on the one end, and the other cherub on the other end: even of the mercy seat shall ye make the cherubims on the two ends thereof. [20] And the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be. And thou shalt put the mercy seat above upon the ark; and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee. And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel. (Exod 25:18–22)

Possible links with Hebrews 9:5 have been suggested (Heppner 1995: 197–8). It is true that a key theme of Hebrews is the promise to the readers that they will be where Jesus is, behind the heavenly veil (Heb 6:19–20). Christ is the heavenly high priest who pioneers a path for those who would follow him thither, away from worship in the earthly tabernacle to share the life of the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 12:22). But Blake’s reference to Exodus 25 gives us the one clue

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that is needed in order to enable the viewer to see that the body of Jesus is the space where one can meet with God. Here is the Human Form Divine inherent in, and embracing, all people, being given pictorial articulation, as in ‘The Nativity’. IMAGES

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Explicit images connected with the Book of Revelation are especially prominent among the watercolours that Blake painted for Thomas Butts between 1800 and 1805 (B515–24). Blake’s interest in the Book of Revelation has led some to suppose that the pictures on this theme form a distinct cycle within this set (Bindman 1977: 164–5). The picture ‘The Four and Twenty Elders’ from Revelation 4:4 (1803–5; Tate Gallery, London, B515) reflects Blake’s fascination with Ezekiel’s merkabah and its ongoing interpretation within the Bible (cf. ‘Ezekiel’s Wheels’, 1803–5; Museum of Fine Art, Boston, B468, above, p. 141). This picture combines chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation, with the rainbow (Ezek 1:28 and Rev 4:3), eyes (Ezek 1:18 and Rev 4:6) and the sealed scroll (Rev 5:1). Here is the enthroned divinity with a scroll in his hand, surrounded by bowing figures and the swirl of eyes and the evocation of wheels. The flames of fire at the bottom evoke Revelation 4:5, the lamps of God which John himself interprets as the ‘seven spirits of God’ (Rev 4:5). This visual evocation of John’s first vision of heaven in Revelation 4 may at first glance lead the viewer to suppose that the imagery is at odds with the challenge to the notion of divine monarchy which is at the heart of Blake’s Job series. Blake is, of course, being faithful to the elements of the text of Revelation 4. But in one respect, and one easily missed, Blake follows the prompt offered to him by Revelation 5:6. There is a dramatic subversion of the scene in heaven. The conventional portrait of the divine throne and its environs includes the presentation of a Lamb. Blake brilliantly captures the unprepossessing appearance of this creature, whose presence becomes central to the Book of Revelation and unleashes the tide of history. A viewer of Blake’s image could be forgiven for overlooking the passive creature lying in front of the enthroned divinity, surrounded by what appear to be the threatening prongs of a crown. The viewer’s eyes are initially drawn to the scene of splendour, and one has to look more closely to find the passive, singularly unimpressive creature at the bottom of the picture, near the viewer. This reaction would parallel John’s account in Revelation 4–5, where the description of his heavenly vision starts with the one seated upon the throne and those worshipping. It is only then that John sees the scroll in the hand of the divinity:

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And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon. And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon. And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof. And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne. (Rev 5:1–7)

The conquering ‘Lion of the tribe of Judah’ turns out to be a dead lamb (Rev 5:6), initially unseen and only spotted once the seer has been assured that there is hope after all. In Blake’s image, the point is made as forcibly as in the words of Revelation. That is appropriate, for it is what John of Patmos sees that is more important (‘And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain’, Rev 5:6), not what he hears (‘And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals’, Rev 5:5). A dead creature, with no mark of triumph but the marks of its own slaughter, turns out to be the agent of God’s purposes. In Revelation 5 the apparent moment of defeat, when a would-be messiah died in apparent failure, turned out to be the decisive moment in history. It is no surprise, therefore, that the figure of the lamb was to become such an important component of Blake’s theological thought, especially in Jerusalem (cf. ‘The Lamb’, Songs of Innocence, E8). ‘Death on a Pale Horse’ (c. 1800; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, B517) evinces an energy fitting for a depiction of two of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, inexorably moving forward the tide of history, unfurling in the scroll above their heads (Rev 6:8). The horsemen, who loom so large in this picture, also appear in Blake’s depiction of the angel of Revelation 10:1, 5: ‘And the Angel which I saw lifted up his hand’ (c. 1805; Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art, New York, B518). Here we see John as a spectator of the enormous apparition before him, faithfully describing what he sees in the scroll laid out on the writing desk in

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front of him. The scene harks back to the kind of depiction of John’s visionary activity that we find in, for example, Hans Memling’s ‘St John on Patmos’ (1479; Altarpiece of St John, Bruges). The enormous size of the angel parallels that of the dragon which persecutes the ‘Woman Clothed with the Sun’ in Blake’s watercolours of Revelation 12:1 (1803–5; Brooklyn Museum, New York, inscribed ‘Rev: ch: 12th: v. 4th’, B519; and c. 1805; National Gallery of Art, Washington, B520, with unclear textual reference). Both pictures are dominated by the terrible winged monster with ram’s horns – similar to the depiction of the ‘Great Dragon from the Sea’ (1803–5; National Gallery of Art, Washington, B521, inscribed ‘Rev: Ch 13th v. 1: & 2’; and the related image in the Rosenbach Museum, Philadelphia, B522, inscribed ‘Rev: ch: 13th: v. 11th & 12th’). In one, the beast towers over a supine woman with the moon literally under her feet and her golden colour indicating the fact that she is ‘clothed with the sun’. In the other, the many-headed monster flies down, while below, the woman looks up startled and fearful (as in the Blake’s sketch of 1 Enoch 7:1–15, B827 3, which depicts the seduction of the women by the ‘sons of god’, see pp. 110–11). Blake painted ‘The Whore of Babylon’ (Rev 17) twice, once in a picture exclusively devoted to the subject (1809; British Museum, B523) and once in the context of his illustrations to Edward Young’s Night Thoughts (1795–7; British Museum, B330 345; Bindman 1977: 109–13). In the first, Babylon points with her finger to the stream pouring forth from the cup in her right hand, in which one perceives acts of violence as well as angelic beings with bowls (Rev 16) and trumpets (Rev 8–9; 11:15; Bentley, 2001: Plate 75). The pouring and the trumpet blasts take place simultaneously as war rages, suggesting synchronicity, whereas they are obviously in a sequence in the text of Revelation. There are close links between the iniquity of Babylon and the death and destruction described in the previous chapters of Revelation, especially the trumpet (8–9, 11:15) and bowl (16) sequences. So, the sequence of disasters, described by John earlier in the vision, is linked with the political violence caused by the culture of Babylon and outlined in chapters 17–19. Round about 1795, Richard Edwards commissioned Blake to illustrate an edition of Edward Young’s poem, Night Thoughts, published in 1742–5. This was an enormous undertaking, in which Blake filled the margins around the texts with images. His image of Babylon seated on the many-headed beast of Revelation 17 appears on the title-page to ‘Night the Eighth, Virtue’s Apology: or the Man of the World Answer’d, in which are considered, the Love of this Life, the ambition and Pleasure, with the wish and Wisdom of the World’. Young’s words prompt Blake to consider their social and political implications,

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and not simply their application to personal morality. At the time he painted this picture, Blake was acutely aware of the culture of repression in war-torn England. It was a situation in which, to quote his own words written at the time, ‘The Beast & the Whore rule without controls’ (‘Annotations to Watson’s Apology’, E611). He took the opportunity of this commission to insert his protest against the political repression in the England of the 1790s (Bentley 2001: 100–201).5 There is a long tradition of political interpretation of apocalyptic images, rooted in Daniel and the Book of Revelation, going back to the radicalism of mid seventeenth-century England. Gerrard Winstanley used the imagery of Daniel and the Book of Revelation to interpret the oppressive behaviour of the wielders of political and economic power of his day (Fire in the Bush, Sabine 1941: 463–71; CHL ii.190–6, above, p. 171). As in Revelation 13, where Daniel’s vision is the lens through which John of Patmos views Roman oppression, so in Blake’s image the biblical vision is applied to contemporary political realities rather than to the sequence of world-empires in Daniel 7. Blake very pointedly depicts the heads of the beast as contemporary sevenfold military, royal, legal and ecclesiastical powers. The depiction of the binding of Satan, illustrating Revelation 20:1–2: ‘He cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up’ (1800; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard, B524, inscribed ‘Rev: ch: 20th: v. 1. & 2’) suggests a struggle between Satan and the angel who descends from heaven with the key to the Abyss. ‘Binding’ here involves being bound with manacles. Satan is here inhibited so ‘that he should deceive the nations no more’ (Rev 20:3). Blake sees a society which stifles imagination and oppresses the poor. His graphic phrase ‘mindforg’d manacles’ in ‘London’ (Songs of Experience, E26–7, above, pp. 152–3) refers to this oppression. The binding of Satan symbolises the cessation of those negative effects which Blake believes have so blighted society. Blake’s depiction of the New Jerusalem of Revelation 22:1–2, ‘The River of Life’ (c. 1805; B525, inscribed ‘Rev: c xxii v 1 & 2’), with its spacious streets and pure water, must have contrasted with the many dark and cramped scenes of London of Blake’s day. Like Ezekiel’s visionary city (Ezek 47:1), this city is watered with the river of life ‘flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb’ (Rev 22:1). In it women and children bathe in a spacious environment, in which the idyll of Paradise merges with the needs of ordinary urban people to suggest hope and cleanliness rather than squalor. Overhanging the river is the tree of life (Rev 22:2) and a child pointing towards the river as it descends. People are conversing peacefully one with another, while the centrally placed sun shows ‘there will be no more night . . . for the Lord God will be their light, and they will

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reign forever and ever’ (22:5). Around the sun dance the angelic host, reminding the reader of how Blake saw that physical object as a signifier of divine realities: When the Sun rises, do you not see a round Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea? O no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying ‘Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.’ I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight. I look thro’ it & not with it. (‘A Vision of the Last Judgment’, punctuated as Keynes 617, E565–6)

‘The Last Judgment’: a guide to Blake’s understanding of spiritual catharsis Matthew 25:31–45; Revelation 20:11–15 Blake wrote at length about ‘The Last Judgment’ (1808; Petworth House, B642) and a commentary is extant on the Petworth picture (‘The Design of The Last Judgment’, E552–6, see Appendix II).6 Blake painted other versions of the Last Judgment, a subject which occupied his attention as both a painter and a writer. The largest of these depictions is no longer extant (Bindman 1977: 165–7). In the Petworth House picture, the subject of this discussion, there is movement clockwise indicated by the direction of the bodies and the change in the colours from dark to light. Christ is the point around which the whole picture seems to revolve. He sits impassively, in contrast with the more active (and threatening) Christ in judgment of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel depiction, which may have been an inspiration for Blake’s own work. The picture also has affinities with ‘Epitome of James Hervey’s “Meditations among the Tombs”’ (1820; Tate Gallery, London, B770), which presents Hervey standing before an altar behind which is the history of redemption (Bindman 1977: 118, 170). There is none of the ‘sweet communion’ between heaven and earth which is to be found in that picture – similar in its depiction to ‘Jacob’s Dream’ (1805; British Museum, London, B438). Here the moment of judgement and the awesome consequences are set out, even if the ultimate fate of those judged is more optimistically interpreted than in most traditional Christian treatments of the subject. In Blake’s work the fire of judgment is purgative not punitive. Thus in Jerusalem 96:35–7 (E256), the lake of fire becomes the living waters, and at the end of ‘Ninth Night’ of The Four Zoas there is talk about passing through fire and not being consumed (FZix: 844–5, E407; cf. Isa 43:2; further Fuller 1988: 150–7). The contrast in colour between the two sides of the picture emphasises the movement of descent into Hades on the right and the ascent back up to the throne of God on the left. The process of

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judgment depicted in this picture is always happening, with eternity always ready and available, which is in line with the eschatology of the Gospel of John: ‘He that heareth my word and believeth in him that sent me hath everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation but passeth from death to life’ ( John 5:24). In his commentary on the picture, Blake writes of the tabernacle above the enthroned Christ. It is open and not occupied by any human, save for a cross (similar to the throne of God in the Arian baptistery at Ravenna, which is filled by a cross). There is no access to God, therefore, except through Christ. Blake’s emphasis on John 1:18 and Colossians 1:15 as the key to theological understanding is a prominent feature of his theology, especially in the last years of his life. As depicted in the Job series, Christ is the one who makes the Father known. In his version of the Lord’s Prayer, Father and Son are equated (‘Jesus, our Father, who art in thy heaven call’d by thy Name the Holy Ghost’, ‘Annotations to Thornton’s Lord’s Prayer’, E668). Right at the centre of the picture is a diamond-like shape made up of angels with trumpets and other figures. Steve Goldsmith writes perceptively of this: The Last Judgment picture suggests not asceticism but freedom from sexual restraint . . . the ‘fiery gulph’ that defines the primary axis in the Last Judgment series is distinctly, almost pornographically, vaginal . . . most clearly pronounced in the Petworth figure. . . . the arrangement of trumpeting angels suggests the labia. The Logos and Babylon are positioned at two ends of a vulva. (Goldsmith 1993: 147–8)

Such an interpretation is not merely the product of a post-Freudian age. Mary Carruthers has pointed out how in a medieval block-book known as the Ars memorandi, which may have been intended to help the cleric or interested layperson remember in order the contents of each chapter of the four Gospels, the vulva serves as a prompt for John 3, the visit of Nicodemus to Jesus. The vulva is clearly seen on the body of the Johannine eagle to recall the words which Jesus addresses to Nicodemus, ‘unless a person be born again’ (Carruthers 2002: 259). Nicodemus misunderstands and talks of the impossibility of entering into one’s mother’s womb: ‘Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?’ ( John 3:4). Blake’s image summons the viewer ‘to enter once more into the womb’ to embark on the path of judgment leading to new birth. When an individual embraces truth, the last judgment happens and a new birth takes place. That is the way into the Kingdom of God. The link of new birth and

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eschatology is present in Matt. 19:28 as well as Jn 3:5. It is that rebirth which Blake seeks to portray in his ‘Last Judgment’ picture. Possible links between Blake and the Moravians, via his mother, may explain the link to the German medieval piety and may offer a plausible explanation of Blake’s use of the sexual symbolism at the centre of ‘The Last Judgment’ (Schuchard 2006: 39–45; also Rix 2007: 7–13 and ‘I saw a Chapel all of Gold’, E467). In Moravian piety both the circumcision and the final wound of Christ, in which the lance pierces Jesus’ side ( John 19:34), are given a sexual/theological explanation. The Moravian leader, Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760), exhorted his followers to become like children and imagine ‘the hole’ in the side of Jesus as a place into which they might feel drawn, where they might bathe in the blood and the womb-like warmth. An example from a Moravian hymn illustrates this: What Pleasure doth a heart perceive, that rests in the precious Hole, lives there, loves and sports, works and praises the little Lamb, and tho’ it storms and blusters without, feels nothing of it within his dwelling. . . . My heart dwells in Jesus’ side. . . . I lay myself in the Hole made by the Spear. . . . I have licked all over that Rock Salt! O how well did it taste, on that moment my little Soul is transported into the little Side-Hole. (Schuchard 2006: 39)7

So, the vaginal symbolism of the hole in Jesus’ side in Moravian piety may well be the mediating link with the use of the image of the vulva in the medieval material. Of course, the way in which Blake uses the imagery is not explicitly linked with John 19. What is of importance here is the similar hermeneutical model, which is common to both Moravian piety and Blake’s imagery in the ‘Last Judgment’, in which entry through the vagina into the womb is used as an imaginative means of understanding the labour of redemption. Blake writes of the way he hopes viewers of the picture will identify with the details of his picture using this kind of interpretative approach: If the Spectator could Enter into these Images in his Imagination, approaching them on the Fiery Chariot of his Contemplative Thought if he could enter into Noahs Rainbow or into his Bosom, or could make a Friend & Companion of one of these Images of wonder which always intreats him to leave mortal things as he must know then would he arise from his Grave then would he meet the Lord in the Air [cf. 1 Thess 4:17] & then he would be happy. (‘A Vision of the Last Judgment’, E560)

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The entry of the ‘Spectator . . . into these Images in his Imagination’ reflects the sentiments Zinzendorf commended to his followers.8 In conclusion: ‘An Allegory of the Bible’ This early picture (1780–5; Tate Gallery, London, B127) typifies Blake’s attitude to an authoritative book. At first glance, it seems to be at odds with his outspoken critique of ‘holy scripture’ in his work in the 1790s. A dominant position is given to the flaming, Bible-like book, with an aura of sanctity around it, behind what appears to be the equivalent of an altar rail. The book itself is open and seems to be transparent as one can see through it to the reality behind. The setting seems to be a temple or a church. The rail, or parapet, which separates the flaming book from a group of women and children, is intricately decorated, and in the pattern on the left-hand side there appears to be an alpha and omega. The figures in the picture are all female. In the foreground a woman and female child ascend steps to meet another, descending, woman.9 While the woman with the child at the bottom of the picture may be looking up at the book in the background, her outstretched arm is open to the approaching woman, centre-front. There is a contrast between the ethereal, paler ambience of the top part of the picture (the child standing sideways on the left of the woman is ghost-like in appearance) and the darker, more full-blooded, people in the foreground. We note the colour contrast between the ruddy hue of the main female figure and the white upper part of the picture. This may suggest a contrast between heaven and earth, sacred and profane. The red dress of the main figure contrasts with the white robes of those nearest the book, suggesting the blood of life (and reminding one of biblical passages like Isa 63:1 and Rev 19:11–13, the former one of Blake’s favourite passages, cf. J7:12, E149). Only one of the women has her attention firmly fixed on the open book, though another woman turns her head and one of the children is looking at it. Despite the book having a prominent place at the top of the picture, it is in the background. What we see in the foreground are the figures, mostly with their backs turned towards the glowing book, relating to each other, some conversing, some reading, but for the most part seemingly unconcerned with this glorious apparition which is just behind them. The fact that the book is behind a rail shut off from them perhaps indicates holiness, being set apart from the intercourse of ordinary life. What is more, holiness means danger (cf. 2 Sam 6:7). In the foreground of the picture we see the fundamental human experience of relationships, something which is not to be learnt primarily through books, but through fellowship.

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As far as the fiery book is concerned, the effect of the watercolour, which allows the viewer to see what seems like a shelf behind the book, suggests that the book is never an end in itself, never the object of devotion, for one must look through it, with it, and, indeed, beyond it, back to the reality in which one lives.10 Near the end of the Job sequence (Plate 20), Job is portrayed bequeathing his inheritance to his daughters. There are no books. As in this picture, the daughters of Job sit facing the viewer of the picture, while behind them (in the engraving) are scenes from Job’s experience, which he is sharing with them as his inheritance. The major contrast in ‘The Allegory of the Bible’ is between the flaming book at the top and the two women meeting in the foreground. The human intercourse contrasts with the book as an object of curiosity, safely contained behind the rail, however exalted a position it may have. Books are used in the picture, but the significant point is that they are being used and not revered.

11

Blake and biblical interpretation Some Concluding Reflections

In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake wrote ‘All Bibles or sacred Codes have been the causes of . . . errors’ (Plate 3, E34). For Blake, ‘every thing that lives is Holy’ (MHH Plate 27, E45). So, he challenges the way in which we divide human and divine, body and soul, the sacred and the secular into mutually exclusive opposites, rather than allowing ‘contraries’ to exist alongside each other in creative tension. This is a key issue for him: ‘without Contraries is no progression’ (MHH Plate 3, E34). Blake saw the Bible being used as a text to police people and keep them in their place and lamented this mistaken view of its nature, for, as he wrote, ‘The Whole Bible is filld with Imaginations & Visions from End to End & not with Moral virtues that is the baseness of Plato & the Greeks & all Warriors’ (‘Annotations to Berkeley’, E664). Indeed, Blake was accused by his friends of ‘indulging in the support of the most lax interpretation of the precepts of scripture’ (BR430). What Blake wrote of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales applies just as much to the Bible, in that they similarly offer ‘sentiments and examples’ whose significance is eternal: The characters of Chaucer’s Pilgrims are the characters which compose all ages and nations: as one age falls, another rises, different to mortal sight, but to immortals only the same; for we see the same characters repeated again and again, in animals, vegetables, minerals, and in men; nothing new occurs in identical existence; Accident ever varies, Substance can never suffer change or decay. Of Chaucer’s characters, as described in his Canterbury Tales, some of the names or titles are altered by time, but the characters themselves for ever remain unaltered, and consequently they are the physiognomies or lineaments of universal human life, beyond which Nature never steps. Names alter, things never alter. I have known multitudes of those who would have been monks in the age of monkery, who in this deistical age are deists. As Newton numbered

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the stars, and as Linneus numbered the plants, so Chaucer numbered the classes of men. (A Descriptive Catalogue, E532)

Blake’s view of the Bible is pragmatic: it is the best possible stimulant for the imagination, its images giving a rich basis for an imaginative engagement with the text. So, while there is nothing special about the words, there are few books which stimulate the imagination better than the Bible. Its effects are what count. Blake on the whole did not engage much in what we would call hermeneutical reflection on his work. There is one exception: the remarkable letter he wrote to Dr Trusler (above, pp. 5–7), where we catch a glimpse of the way in which Blake sees his own work (and that of others). The creativity of the interpretative process is all-important, as the affective character of words and images is given its full weight in the impression made on the reader and/or viewer. So, immediacy of response is allowed its place, alongside the reasoned explanation of the effects that have been set in train by an engagement which is intuitive and emotional as well as rational. This is a task in which the role of the interpreter is given its full place even if that may mean a strong reaction against that which one receives: after all, ‘Opposition is true Friendship’ (MHH 20, E42). TEXT

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Blake’s relationship with the Bible is a complex one. As Jean Hagstrum has aptly remarked, ‘Blake read the Bible, but he also saw it. The white page came stained with colour and scored with line’ (Hagstrum in Erdman 1970: 88). That view echoes words of John Ruskin who, in The Modern Painters (v.333), famously wrote of sight: ‘to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one’. For Blake (as for Wordsworth) seeing with the imaginative eye was a necessary complement to physical sight: ‘We are led to Believe a Lie When we see not Thro the Eye’ (‘Auguries of Innocence’, E492) and ‘I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight I look thro it & not with it’ (‘A Vision of the Last Judgment’, E566, Abrams 1971). In the reader’s engagement with Blake’s texts, word and image jostle each other in the page (Mitchell 1978). Some of his poems demand that the reader/spectator create meaning, there being no definitive meaning waiting to be discovered. Rather, there is only what one scholar describes as the ‘repetition of variable performances’ (Mee 1992: 16; McGann 1988). The often indeterminate relationship between text and image similarly demands that

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readers should use their own imagination to help make sense of the relationship, sometimes the gap, between the two. Blake used books to undermine the iconic and sacred significance of holy books. This is put baldly at the beginning of The Marriage (Plate 4). There the doctrinal content of sacred books is a prime target of his critique; specifically, he deplores the dualism inherent in much doctrine, but underlying his criticism is the problem posed by the very notion of a holy book. A glance at Plate 4 of Urizen or Plate 15 of Milton (also Night Thoughts, p. 63, cf. The Four Zoas, Bentley 1963, facsimile p. 43 Night 3) reminds us of Blake’s ambivalence with regard to ‘Holy Scripture’. Urizen’s holy book contains signs which are indistinct smudges (so lacking the clear delineation which Blake favoured in his art); in the Milton Plate 15 the book shows strings of Hebrew letters which defy translation. Faced with such meaningless signs, we have to make the best of what we see rather than resorting to the tradition of memory, which tells us how to construe words, backed up by the tradition of interpretation, which conditions the meaning we find in the words. And yet Blake, of course, needed words to deconstruct the hegemony of words. His solution to this problem in the Job sequence was to offer a composite art in which image and text compete. It is our task as interpreters to make sure that we do not let our preference for words and language evacuate the images of their interpretative power. Images are important, and their status in his work is the artist’s contribution to the redressing of the balance between words and images. Whatever it was that Job saw, when God appeared to him in the whirlwind (according to the biblical book he heard only words), Blake understood that the seeing both complemented and transcended the hearing, as the imaginative vision enabled him to move beyond words alone to another level of intellectual comprehension. The tension between text and image is a way of enabling the doors of perception to be cleansed. W. J. T. Mitchell, among others, has pointed to this tension as indicative of life in a fallen world (Mitchell 1978). Jerusalem is shot through with tensions as the characters war one with another, and equilibrium and the restoration of all things (apokatastasis) is struggled for (Ferber 1985). In the matter of seeing and hearing, Blake, like his apocalyptic mentor John of Patmos, plays with the contrast between these faculties, allowing the eye to provide understanding of what is heard. In the key passage in the Apocalypse, John hears one thing but sees another. It is what he sees that is the clue to the meaning of what he hears (Rev 5:5–6). Down the centuries the Apocalypse has evoked a string of visual representations as artists have responded to the ‘picturely’ quality of the text (Hagstrum 1970: 85, 88–9). But, as with all the visions from antiquity (and indeed

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most visions since), its pictures became encapsulated in words. Blake’s composite art, however, exemplifies the struggle of the images within the text of the Apocalypse to break out of the words and have a life of their own, at least in the watercolours. In this he marks a development of the process started by Dürer, in which the apocalyptic images are given priority over the words encoding them. Similarly, in the opening engraving of his Apocalypse sequence, Jean Duvet, in the mid-sixteenth century, imagined himself as John on Patmos, as he attempted to give pictorial expression to John’s visions. His illustrations involved a ‘re-seeing’ of John’s vision as one old man enters into the visions of another, and shares his sense of crisis and impending doom (Carey 1999: 276–9; Rowland 2005). We have seen that the thrust of the Job engravings is to redress the balance between words and pictures by privileging vision over hearing, pictures over words, and thereby to challenge once again the prime place given to the Bible in the postReformation world. The nightmare scene of Plate 11 epitomises the crisis for composite art: the false god wants to keep Job in thrall to words, but it is through images, dreams of the night, that Job comes to the realisation that the world of words cannot be allowed to rule over the spirit of the imagination. Blake seems to reach back to an almost lost world of medieval biblical interpretation. According to Blake, the accounts of visions in the Bible involve no special ‘sight’ of God. He makes it quite clear that Isaiah did not see God with his physical eyes. Rather his ‘sight’ of God was to find the infinite in everything (MHH12; E38). Human perception may be cleansed, but Blake does not want us to suppose that there is any privileged space to ‘view’ God. The best that can be hoped for is that through the imagination the divine in human and human in divine may be discerned. In the imagination one engages with the phenomenal world in such a way that there is an interaction with more than physical sight. But access through the ‘doors of perception’ is often closed off, when perception is limited to the five senses: ‘the desires & perceptions of man untaught by any thing but organs of sense, must be limited to objects of sense’ (There is no Natural Religion, aVI, E2), for ‘None could have other than natural or organic thoughts if he had none but organic perceptions’. Nevertheless, ‘Mans perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception. he percieves more than sense (tho’ ever so acute) can discover’ (There is no Natural Religion bI, E2). That does not mean that there is a special revelatory access to God, but there can be a training of the faculties to discern more than the five senses might show, thus cleansing the ‘doors of perception’ to allow discernment of the infinite in all things. For Blake, knowledge of God is a human knowledge. ‘All deities reside in the human breast’ (MHH11, E38). This is less an anticipation of ‘Feuerbachian’ replacement of

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theology by psychology and more a reminder of the limits of theological language in corresponding to any transcendent referent. Blake is agnostic about divinity and maintains an appropriate reserve about the possibility of human language adequately capturing divinity in words. The attempts of Urizen to do that in his holy book, whose signs Blake depicts as smudges which only Urizen and his priests on earth can understand, challenge the belief that it can capture the divine glimpsed by the biblical writers. BLAKE

AND TRADITION

Often it is not so much the detail of Blake’s relationship with the Bible as rather the mode of that relationship which is most striking. In particular, the dialectic interpretation is crucial for Blake’s method. This applies not only to the Bible but also to his relationship with key figures in religion, art and literature, foremost among these being Milton and Dante. Differing aspects of the dialectical relationship with the former are touched on throughout this book. What is striking about Blake’s understanding of the relationship between himself and Milton is that he strives for an intimate relationship in which the sense of identification, the breaking down of the barriers between two human persons, becomes very apparent. In the imagery of Milton, Plate 43(21), a kneeling man appears to be face to face with the groin of the standing figure, suggesting the potency from the one is transmitted to the other. The figures could be Blake and his prophetic angel, Los (M22:7–10, E117), or Blake and his illustrious predecessor, Milton. In any event, a two-way process is involved, as the living poet not only receives inspiration but is enabled to redeem Milton’s morality and theology. This picture captures, almost better than anything else, what is absolutely typical about Blake’s hermeneutics. There is respect for what he receives from another, no better exemplified than in the intimacy of the relationship (Essick and Viscomi 1993: 33–4; see p. 260 below, William Blake’s Illuminated Books, vol. 3). The text from the past, therefore, is no mere object to be studied; it is to be taken in and its potency suffused throughout oneself. But the text’s original distinctiveness does not remain, it becomes something else; its potency is the medium of a new form of creativity in the one who creates afresh. This is crucial for Blake’s understanding of the Bible also. The integrity of biblical words lies in their potential for stimulating the imagination of the reader and how they may affect the reader. To this extent, Blake’s engagement with Scripture is very similar to what we find in ancient exegesis and to his more modern predecessor Jacob Boehme (Fischer 2004: 52–4; Rix 2007: 13–17;

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O’Regan 2002; on a similar approach to exegesis in medieval monasticism, Carruthers 1990, and for the antecedents in English radical religion, p. 157 above). There can be no doubt about the importance of the biblical text, not so much for its holiness in and of itself, rather for its being the kind of text which can ‘rouze the faculties to act’. Like Milton’s words, which themselves are inspired, the text could be wrong and need to be corrected by the later interpreter. This is the hermeneutics of the subordination of the word to the spirit, as is found in the opening of the Job series. It echoes the New Testament writings themselves, for, when seeking to discern what may or may not be of God, early Christian writers did not primarily appeal to texts, for they never allowed what had been written in the past to determine what God’s Spirit was calling people to in the present. The Spirit opens up new insight to those ‘who cannot bear it now’ (John 16:12), as the divine spirit leads the disciples into all truth (John 16:13). Such an interpretative process has a long tradition within the Bible itself. Thus, Ezekiel eats the scroll as a prelude to his prophetic word to his contemporaries (Ezekiel 3), and John the seer takes up the imagery of Ezekiel, which then becomes part of the language in which he applies to himself the internalisation of the words of prophecy. Blake then too responds to the commission: ‘Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings’ (Rev 10:11). Blake’s complex understanding of his relationship with the past is allied to a grasp of creativity and autonomy. Nowhere is his understanding of inspiration better seen than in the memorable criticism of Swedenborg, who is enslaved to the texts he reveres and produces no message of his own: Have now another plain fact: Any man of mechanical talents may from the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen, produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborg’s. and from those of Dante or Shakespear [sic], an infinite number. But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine. (Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 22, E43)

While there is an inheritance learnt from a predecessor, one must move beyond it. In Blake’s case the whole process is an extraordinary intellectual exercise. Thus, in the case of Milton, Blake believed himself to be inhabited by Milton’s spirit. Yet in this case the ‘spirit’ does not take over the one into whom it enters but is itself transformed in the process of inhabiting the new mind and body. The result is an intellectual and redemptive catharsis which manages to purge Milton of the ‘selfhood’ which Blake, the later critic, can discern so that Milton with

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Blake’s vicarious assistance will come to recognise what eluded him in his life – that he was after all ‘of the Devils party without knowing it’ (MHH6, E35). SACHEXEGESE

AND

SACHKRITIK

Typical of the work of interpretation is the identification of a major organising principle in the light of which the particulars of a text are understood. This longstanding technique of hermeneutics has a modern form whereby the interpreter seeks to discern the drift of an author’s thought and use that as a criterion to judge particular themes which do not fit easily with the underlying current. It is a technique which has enabled modern biblical scholars to offer a critique of the instruction given in 1 Corinthians 11:3–16 (cf. 1 Cor 14:33–5; 1 Timothy 2:12) on the supposition that the HEART of what Paul thinks about relations within the body of Christ is to be found in passages like Galatians 3:26–8 (Boyarin 1999: 180–200). Blake’s interpretation of Milton could be said to demonstrate this kind of approach, which brings to mind T. S. Eliot’s characterisation of ‘the conscious present’ as ‘an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past’s awareness of itself cannot show’ (Eliot 1922). So, Blake anticipated a significant modern trend in biblical exegesis, known as Sachkritik. It has been defined by Robert Morgan as referring to ‘the interpreter’s criticism of the formulation of the text in the light of what (he thinks) the subjectmatter (Sache) to be; criticism of what is said by what is meant’ (Morgan 1973: 42, my italics). So the actual literal sense is judged in the light of the overall drift of a piece of writing. Thus, the discrete parts of the book of Job are assessed in the light of Job 42:5; tradition and memory are read in the light of immediacy and vision. In what has become a classic commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, the German theologian Karl Barth focused on what the text might mean for the reader rather than solely on what it meant for Paul and how it was understood by his first-century CE readers. The commentary was greeted with incredulity by the biblical scholarly establishment because it seemed to be the exact antithesis of a commentary. Barth explains his method over against his critics in the preface to the second edition of his commentary, a statement which has become a classic of modern biblical hermeneutics: . . . how energetically Calvin, having first established what stands in the text, sets himself to re-think the whole material and to wrestle with it, till the walls which separate the sixteenth century from the first become transparent! Paul speaks, and the man of the sixteenth century hears. The conversation between the

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original record and the reader moves round the subject matter, until a distinction between yesterday and today becomes impossible . . . . . . . The matter contained in the text cannot be released save by a creative straining of the sinews, by a relentless elastic application of the ‘dialectical’ method. . . . Criticism . . . applied to historical documents means for me the measuring of words and phrases by the standard of that which the documents are speaking. . . . The Word ought to be exposed in the words. Intelligent comment means that I am driven on till I stand with nothing before me but the enigma of the matter; till the document seems hardly to exist as a document; till I have almost forgotten that I am not its author; till I know the author so well that I allow him to speak in my name and am even able to speak in his name myself. (Barth 1933: 7–8)

‘The Word ought to be exposed in the words’, wrote Barth. ‘Melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid’ (MHH 14, E39), wrote Blake about his printing method, but he might equally have been speaking of his way of fastening on what can be ‘spiritually discerned’ in texts (1 Cor 2:14, quoted on the first plate of the Job sequence): the discernment of the Word of God Universal within the ‘peculiar Word of God’ in the Bible (‘Annotations to Watson’s Apology’, E615; Frye 1947: 109; Tannenbaum 1982: 107). The agony of the hermeneutical exercise, ‘the creative straining of the sinews’, could well be summarised by Blake’s ‘mental fight’. The identification between text and oneself, so that the modern author speaks in the name of the earlier author, is exactly what we find Blake doing: not a repetition of what has been written but an exposition of ‘The Word in the words’. Barth meant here the Divine Logos, but this could equally well apply to Blake’s understanding of Christ, the means and goal of the human imagination. This kind of hermeneutical approach characterises Blake’s engagement with the Bible from the beginning of his life to the end. In his early writings on the Bible there is a critical edge which is later lacking, but, as we have seen, in the Job sequence the same method is at work as in Jerusalem, where the images of the Book of Revelation, so starkly dualistic in the original, have become the vehicle for an inclusive perspective on heaven and hell. In a remarkably insightful, albeit gnomic utterance, S. T. Coleridge called Blake a ‘man of Genius’ (Collected Letters, 4:833–4). He was thinking of Songs of Innocence and of Experience; The First Book of Urizen and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell might have elicited a less sympathetic response:

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A man of Genius – and I apprehend, a Swedenborgian certainly, a mystic emphatically. You perhaps smile at my calling another Poet, a Mystic, but verily I am in the very mire of commonplace common-sense compared with Mr. Blake, apo-, or rather ana-, calyptic Poet, and Painter!’ (Coleridge, Collected Letters, ed. E. L. Griggs (Oxford, 1956), 4: 833–4. On this Ferber 1978; Paley 2006)

Coleridge suggests either that Blake himself was ‘anacalyptic’, in the sense either that his mind was unclouded and able to discern things that other poets or painters could not see, or that his poetry and paintings enabled those who engaged with them to have that ‘anacalyptic’ experience, in which the veil is removed from the mind to discern the deeper things about God and the world. Blake seems to regard the words of the Bible more as a catalyst for the ‘anacalyptic’ move to a different perspective, a stimulus which will enable discernment rather than the Bible itself being the container of the mysteries to be discerned. Blake depicts this in the frontispiece of Jerusalem, where the young man goes through an open door into the darkness with a light in his hand. The Bible can function as the light to explore the darkness rather than itself being the darkness which must be illumined. The Bible is an aid to sight rather than the goal of what one might be looking for. Blake’s focus on the effect of texts, whether the Bible, or his own allusive illuminated texts, suggest that texts are less an object to be explained than a stimulus to the exploration of the imaginative space which biblical texts may offer. Despite the criticism he had of the Bible when it was elevated to the position of a sacred code, he found in it the resources to create afresh words of hope and insight, which he hoped might galvanise a complacent society to see the folly of ‘religion hid in war’ and take up the practice of forgiveness of sins, with all that this entailed. Alan Ecclestone, radical Anglican priest, Communist party member and admirer of Blake, put this well (Gorringe 1995): Blake was shaping a new language to express a conception of human life, of incarnate love, of the triumph of Christ, of body and spirit made one flesh, for which there were no adequate images in the minds of men [. . .] in his time. Such imagery has to be new-made over and over again. Only so can the old imagery be reborn, only so can the Scriptures and the spiritual experiences of [human beings] of other generations become present truth and quickening words. . . . Blake found men and women using the Bible in the very way Christ had deplored, because they had ceased to learn to speak in the Spirit in their own

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tongues. They were as men and women who laboriously learned a dead language and made it the tomb of the Spirit. The words they used were a mockery of their efforts, yet no one laughed. The demand Blake makes is so great that our spirituality has not yet caught up with him. His prophetic writings have not passed into and become a living part of our spiritual perception. (Ecclestone 1975: 60–2).

For Blake, the words of the Bible were not those which somehow contained something peculiarly holy or special. Blake’s focus on the effect of text, whether the Bible, or his own allusive illuminated texts, suggests that texts are less an object to be explained than a stimulus to the exploration of the imaginative space that biblical texts may offer. Blake was not concerned with offering an apology for the Bible, as a whole or in part. If it worked as a text, to enable humans to change, then its role spoke for itself. If it did not, then it had to be put on one side and seen for what it was, a relic of the past, which no amount of sophisticated apologetics could redeem. Despite the criticism he had of the Bible when it was elevated to the position of a sacred code, he found in it the resources to create afresh words of hope and insight, which he hoped might galvanize a complacent society to see the folly of ‘Religion hid in war’ and engage in the practice of forgiveness of sins, or, to put it in Blake’s words, written in 1790, ‘Without Contraries is no progression’.

Appendix I

Extract from ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ (c. 1818) in William Blake’s Notebook (Erdman 1977: N48–52, E521–3, with scriptural allusions) [This was spoke by My Spectre to Voltaire Bacon &c]1

5

10

15

20

Was Jesus Chaste or did he Give any Lessons of Chastity The morning blushd fiery red Mary was found in Adulterous bed Earth groand beneath & Heaven above Trembled at discovery of Love Jesus was sitting in Moses Chair2 They brought the trembling Woman There Moses commands she be stond to Death. What was the word sound of Jesus breath He laid his hand on Moses Law The Ancient Heavens in Silent Awe3 Writ with Curses from Pole to Pole All away began to roll The Earth trembling & Naked lay4 In secret bed of Mortal Clay On Sinai felt the hand Divine Putting back the bloody shrine5 And she heard the breath of God As she heard by Edens flood Go[o]d & Evil are no more Sinais trumpets cease to roar Cease finger of God to Write6 The Heavens are not clean in thy Sight

244

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

60

A P P E N D I X I: ‘T H E E V E R L A S T I N G G O S P E L ’

Thou art Good & thou Alone Nor may the sinner cast one stone To be good only is to be A God Devil or else a Pharisee Thou Angel of the Presence Divine7 That didst create this Body of Mine Wherefore has[t] thou writ these Laws And Created Hells dark jaws My Presence I will take from thee A Cold Leper thou shalt be8 Tho thou wast so pure & bright9 That Heaven was Impure in thy Sight Tho thy Oath turnd Heaven Pale10 Tho thy Covenant built Hells Jail Tho thou didst all to Chaos roll With the Serpent for its soul11 Still the breath Divine does move And the breath Divine is Love Mary Fear Not Let me see The Seven Devils that torment thee Hide not from my Sight thy Sin That forgiveness thou maist win Has no Man Condemned thee No man Lord!12 then what is he Who shall Accuse thee. Come Ye forth Fallen fiends of Heavenly birth13 That have forgot your Ancient love And driven away my trembling Dove You shall bow before her feet You shall lick the dust for Meat And tho you cannot Love but Hate Shall be beggars at Loves Gate What was thy Love Let me see it Was it love or Dark Deceit Love too long from Me has fled. Twas dark deceit to Earn my bread Twas Covet or twas Custom or Twas Some trifle not worth caring for

A P P E N D I X I: ‘T H E E V E R L A S T I N G G O S P E L ’

65

70

75

80

85

90

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That they may call a crime shame & Sin The Loves Temple where that God dwelleth in14 And hide in secret hidden Shrine The Naked Human form divine And render that a Lawless thing On which the Soul Expands its wing But this O Lord this was my sin When first I let these Devils in In dark pretence to Chastity Blaspheming Love blaspheming thee Thence Rose Secret Adulteries And thence did Covet also rise My Sin thou hast forgiven me Canst thou forgive my Blasphemy15 Canst thou return to this dark Hell And in my burning bosom dwell And canst thou Die that I may live And canst thou Pity & forgive Then Rolld the shadowy Man away16 From the Limbs of Jesus to make them his prey An ever devo[u]ring appetite Glittering with festering Venoms bright Crying Ive found Crucify this cause of distress You Who dont keep the secrets of Holiness All Mental Powers by Diseases we bind But he heals the Deaf & the Dumb & the Blind Whom God has afflicted for Secret Ends He comforts & Heals & calls them Friends But when Jesus was Crucified Then was perfected his glittring pride. In three Nights he devourd his prey And still he devours the Body of Clay For Dust & Clay is the Serpents meat Which never was made for Man to Eat

245

Appendix II T O O Z I A S H U M P H R Y E S Q re The Design of The Last Judgment, which I have completed by your recommendation [under a fortunate star] for The Countess [del. Earl (in another hand)] of Egremont, [by a happy accident] it is necessary to give some account of: & its various parts ought to be described, for the accomodation of those who give it the honor of attention. Christ seated on the Throne of Judgment: The Heavens in Clouds rolling before him & around him, like a scroll ready to be consumed in the fires of the Angels; who descend before his feet with their four trumpets sounding to the four Winds Beneath; the Earth is convuls’d with the labours of the Resurrection. In the caverns of the Earth is the Dragon with seven heads & ten horns, Chained by two Angels & above his Cavern[s] on the Earth’s Surface, is the Harlot, siezed & bound [chain’d] by two Angels with Chains while her Palaces are falling into [in] ruins & her Councellors & Warriors are descending into the Abyss in wailing & despair. Hell opens beneath the Harlot’s seat on the left hand into which the Wicked are descending [while others rise from their Graves on the brink of the Pit]. The right hand of the Design is appropriated to the Resurrection of The Just; the left hand of the Design is appropriated to the Resurrection & Fall of the Wicked. Immediately before the Throne of Christ is Adam & Eve, kneeling in humiliation, as representatives of the whole Human Race; Abraham & Moses kneel on each side beneath them; from the Cloud on which Eve kneels & beneath Moses & from the Tables of Stone which utter lightnings, is seen Satan wound round by the Serpent & falling headlong; the Pharisees appear on the left hand pleading their own righteousness before the Throne of Christ; [& before] The Book of Death [which] is open’d on Clouds by two Angels; [&] many groupes

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LAST JUDGMENT

247

of Figures are falling from before the Throne & from the Sea of Fire which flows before the steps of the Throne on which are seen the Seven Lamps of the Almighty burning before the Throne: many Figures Chain’d & bound together [in various attitudes of Despair & Horror:] fall thro’ the air, & some are scourged by Spirits with flames of fire into the Abyss of Hell which opens to recieve them beneath, on the left hand of the Harlot’s seat, where others are howling & descending into the flames & in the act of dragging each other into Hell & of contending in fighting with each other on the [very] brink of Perdition. Before the Throne of Christ on the Right hand the Just in humiliation & in exultation, rise thro’ the air with their Children & Families: some of whom are bowing before the Book of Life which is open’d by two Angels on Clouds: many Groupes arise with Exultation [in joy]: among them is a Figure crowned with Stars & the moon beneath her feet with six infants around her. She represents the Christian Church. The Green Hills appear beneath: with the Graves of the Blessed, which are seen bursting with their births of immortality; Parents & Children [Wives & Husbands] embrace & arise together & in exulting attitudes [of great joy] tell each other, that The New Jerusalem is ready to descend upon Earth; they arise upon the air rejoicing: others newly awaken’d from the Grave stand upon the Earth embracing & shouting to the Lamb who cometh in the Clouds in Power & great Glory. The Whole upper part of the Design is a view of Heaven opened: around the Throne of Christ, [in the Cloud which rolls away are the] Four Living Creatures filled with Eyes, attended by Seven Angels with the Seven Vials of the Wrath of God, & above these [there are] Seven Angels with the Seven Trumpets compose [composing] the Cloud, which by its rolling away displays the opening Seats of the Blessed, on the right & the left of which are seen the Four & Twenty Elders seated on Thrones to Judge the Dead. Behind the Seat & Throne of Christ appears [appear] the Tabernacle with its Veil opened: [&] the Candlestick on the right: the Table with the Shew Bread, on the left: & in the midst, the Cross in place of the Ark, with the two Cherubim bowing over it. On the right hand of the Throne of Christ is Baptism. On his left is the Lord’s Supper: the two introducers into Eternal Life. Women with Infants approach the Figure of an aged Apostle which represents Baptism; & on the left hand the Lord’s Supper is administer’d by Angels, from the hands of another aged Apostle; these Kneel on each side of the Throne which is surrounded by a glory, in the glory many Infants appear [in the Glory] representing [the] Eternal

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Creation flowing from The Divine Humanity in Jesus: who opens the Scroll of Judgment upon his knees before the Living & the Dead. Such is the Design which you, my Dear Sir, have been the cause of my producing & which: but for you might have slept till the Last Judgment. WILLIAM BLAKE [18 January 1808] Feby 1808. (punctuation and version as Keynes 442–4, cf. E552–4)

Notes

2 ‘T H U S

DID

JOB

C O N T I N U A L L Y ’:

BLAKE’S JOB

ENGRAVINGS:

PART I

1. The biblical passages on the engravings are listed in Wright 1972:53–64 and La Belle 1973. 2. The attempt to link the Job engravings to Blake’s mythological world, and to use the latter as a means of deciphering them, has been typical of much of the writing on Blake’s Job from Wicksteed onwards (Wicksteed 1924 and for a comprehensive survey Lindberg 1973; also, briefly, Wright 1972: 65–7; Jessen 2009: 99–168). What follows in key respects parallels Lindberg’s stress on the importance of seeing a development not only in Job’s spiritual life but in the nature of his concept of the divinity also (Lindberg 1973: 82). Lindberg points to a reminiscence of Crabb Robinson in which Blake spoke of there being ‘error in heaven’ and of there being a ‘perpetual struggle between love and selfishness in heaven’ (1973: 237, 86, BR696). Blake’s issues pervade the series (Brown 2000: 220–6), but this is not to deny that these remarkable engravings are an example of a brilliant exegesis of the book of Job, as Blake manages to shed new light on the book’s meaning (cf. Wright 1972: xvi; Brown 2000: 220–6). 3. Blake’s version of Job 42: 5 in Engraving 17 has: ‘I have heard thee with the hearing of the Ear’. 4. Blake often contrasts ‘memory’ with ‘inspiration’. It is a contrast between adherence to received wisdom, whether it be the teaching of the church or devotion to the letter of the Bible as an authoritative text, and the creative, poetic insight – the imagination imparting new understandings of, and engagement with, what is received. 5. In this respect, for me Northrop Frye’s view that Job has ‘no apocalypse, only restoration’ is mistaken (Frye 1947: 362), not least because it rests on a narrow, and potentially distorted, understanding of what apocalypse is about. The apocalyptic (revelatory) element in Job is the cataclysmic effect that disclosure (apocalypse) has on a conventionally upright man. 6. According to the Geneva Bible’s marginal note on Genesis 18:1, The Lord appeared to Abraham at the ‘oak grove’ of Mamre’, cf. J27, E171, cf. J70:16, E224. 7. In 2 Corinthians the reference to Letter and Spirit is less about hermeneutics and more about Paul’s claim to be engaged in a ministry which exceeded in importance that of Moses, because it is of a new covenant, which makes the old obsolete. The words of 2 Cor 3:6 come from a passage where there are echoes of Jeremiah 31:33–4 (in 2 Cor 3:3): ‘But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.’ 8. Examples of this are to be found in Jewish texts such as Genesis Rabbah 47:6; 69;3; 82:6; Targumim on Genesis 28:12, all of which have the patriarchs linked with human faces, the h.ayyoth, or, in Blake’s words, the Four Zoas (Rowland 1984). 9. The Hebrew of Exod 14:19 has ‘the angel of God’ (KJV), not ‘angel of the LORD’ . There is a definite article with elohim, a form that is also found in other

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10.

11.

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13.

14. 15.

NOTES

TO PAGES

26–40

passages (e.g. Gen 5:22, 24, of Enoch; and Gen 6: 2, 4, 9, 11, of the ‘sons of God’ and of Noah; also Gen 17:15; 20:17; 31:11; Exod 3:1, 6, 11, 13). There is probably no distinction between elohim with article and without when it refers to God, Davies 2006. In ‘The Ghost of Abel’ (E270–2), however, Blake plays with the distinction between Jehovah and the Elohim, and the question arises whether Blake might have noted in Exod 14:19 a reference to the Elohim rather than Jehovah and seen the angel is an angel of ‘the gods’. If so, this may help to explain the negative view he has of this figure in a text like ‘The Everlasting Gospel’. What exactly Blake meant by ‘this Angel is frequently call’d by the Name of Jehovah Elohim, the I am of the Oaks of Albion’ is not clear. Perhaps his juxtaposition of Jehovah Elohim (cf. J61:2, E211) may reflect the merging of Jehovah and Elohim at the climax of The Ghost of Abel (2:24, E272), when Jehovah emerges triumphant over the Elohim. The reference to ‘the Oaks of Albion’ suggests a conflation of the situation of Abraham (who is said to be a druid, J27, E171), to whom God appeared by ‘the oaks of Mamre’, and Albion/Britain (note KJV has ‘plains of Mamre’ but the marginal note of the Geneva Bible has ‘oak grove’, cf. n. 6). Blake criticised the ideology of the enthroned divinity because it offered a warrant for human political monarchy, something which he cruelly parodies in the image in Europe 11: ‘Albions Angel rose upon the Stone of Night./He saw Urizen on the Atlantic;/And his brazen Book,/That Kings & Priests had copied on Earth/Expanded from North to South’ (Europe 11:3–5, E64). The depiction of Moloch in ‘The Flight of Moloch’ (Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, 1809, B538 5) resembles the demon in Engraving 3 as well as the scaly figures in Europe 7(8), the fourth of the Enoch sketches (B827 3), the Angel of Death in ‘Pestilence of the First Born’ (c. 1805; Museum of Fine Art, Boston, B442), and Goliath in ‘Goliath Cursing David’ (c. 1805; Museum of Fine Art, Boston, B119A). In Blake’s ‘Goliath cursing David’ (Museum of Fine Art, Boston, B457), Goliath’s shield has an eyeless Urizenic figure emblazoned on it with an arm folded round himself, as in the frontispiece of The First Book of Urizen (Spector, 1990: 202–5). It parallels The First Book of Urizen, where Urizen ‘formed golden compasses And began to explore the Abyss’ (Urizen 20 (18): 39–40, E81, cf. Paradise Lost vii.208, 225–6: ‘The King of Glory in his powerful Word And Spirit . . . took the golden Compasses . . . to circumscribe This Universe, and all created things’). A similar ambivalence in the depiction of divinity is also evident in ‘God Judging Adam’ (1795; Metropolitan Museum of Art, B295). The flames of fire, reminiscent of the Spirit of Pentecost in Acts 2 surround the stern, righteous divinity, with his hand on the book of law, and the legs of the horse which pulls his wheel-less chariot seems to be going at different speeds: the front nearly stationary; the rear seemingly at a canter. The image also resembles ‘The Ghost of Samuel’ (National Gallery of Art, Washington, B458). ‘Hearken, Monarch of France, to the terrors of heaven, and let thy soul drink of my counsel; /Sleeping at midnight in my golden tower, the repose of the labours of men /Wav’d its solemn cloud over my head. I awoke; a cold hand passed over my limbs, and behold /An aged form, white as snow, hov’ring in mist, weeping in the uncertain light, /Dim the form almost faded, tears fell down the shady cheeks; at his feet many cloth’d /In white robes, strewn in air censers and harps, silent they lay prostrated; /Beneath, in the awful void, myriads descending and weeping thro’ dismal winds, /Endless the shady train shiv’ring descended, from the gloom where the aged form wept. /At length, trembling, the vision sighing, in a low voice, like the voice of the grasshopper whisper’d: /My groaning is heard in the abbeys, and God, so long worshipp’d, departs as a lamp /Without oil; for a curse is heard hoarse thro’ the land, from a godless race /Descending to beasts; they look downward and labour and forget my holy law; /The sound of prayer fails from lips of flesh, and the holy hymn from thicken’d tongues; /For the bars of Chaos are burst; her millions prepare their fiery way /Thro’ the orbed abode of the holy dead, to root up and pull down and remove, /And Nobles and Clergy shall fail from before me, and my cloud and vision be no more. . . . The priest rot in his surplice by the lawless lover, the holy beside the accursed, /The King, frowning in purple, beside the grey plowman, and their worms embrace together. /The voice ceas’d, a groan

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shook my chamber; I slept, for the cloud of repose returned, /But morning dawn’d heavy upon me. I rose to bring my Prince heaven utter’d counsel’ (The French Revolution, E291–3). 3 ‘B U T

N O W M Y E Y E S E E T H T H E E ’:

BLAKE’S JOB

ENGRAVINGS:

P A R T II

1. It is just possible, however, that, far from seeing this as a free rendering of the Authorised Version’s ‘though my reins be consumed within me’ (19:27), Blake’s version could be an attempt by him to construe the Hebrew for his own ends. Thus, he might have read bh.uqi rather than bh.eqi ‘in my thing engraved’ for ‘in my breast’ = ‘within me’. An alternative vocalization of the vowels would allow this possibility. The Hebrew hoq has the basic meaning ‘something engraved or inscribed’ (what an engraver does, therefore). It has the derived sense of a statute or ordinance which is inscribed in stone (like the commandments on tablets of stone). If it is taken in this alternative sense, the Hebrew might mean ‘my inward parts are consumed’, or, ‘fulfilled in my thing engraved’, or ‘my inscription’, or ‘the thing inscribed about me’. In other words, what is going on inside Job is faithfully inscribed (by Blake the engraver) as a wrought image on the engravings. The question is: did Blake have sufficient Hebrew knowledge (either himself or as a result of advice) to exploit the possible ambiguity of meaning (cf. Spector 1990: 201–2)? 2. Spector (1990: 201) points out that it is only in the commandment not to commit adultery that Blake reverses the orthography of the aleph (reminiscent of the way he reversed ‘i’ and ‘e’ in engraving 7 in ‘receive’). This is something he does elsewhere (e.g. in Laocoön). She plausibly suggests that Blake did not want to suggest any endorsement of the prohibition of adultery, and the reversal of the letter draws attention to this prohibition and problematises it. 3. The view of humanity that sees an individual as composed of a struggle between two opposite spirits from the beginning of creation has a long tradition, going back to ancient Judaism (1QS 3, Vermes 1997: 73–5, quoted below, p. 79, also Winstanley, Saints Paradice, III, CHL i.331, below, p. 207). In rabbinic Judaism an understanding of humanity emerged in which there were two inclinations in each person, evil and good, both created by God (cf. Ecclesiasticus 15:14, Urbach 1975: i.472). 4. On Cudworth’s biblical interpretation further below, p. 174. It has many affinities with the letter/spirit distinction beloved of Blake. 5. ‘The Casting of the Rebel Angels into Hell’ in the Paradise Lost illustrations deserves comparison with this image (B536 7). In the latter, Christ is an archer whose arrows, fired in all directions, execute judgement on the rebel angels, evoking Rev 6:2 (cf. Rev 19:11; Job 6:3). Blake’s ‘Simoniac Pope’ (in Illustrations to Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’, 1824–7; Tate Gallery, London, B812 35) is similarly depicted descending into a hell of fire (the flames are more obvious in the Dante picture). The fiery ball in which Satan descends resembles the shape which is at the very centre of Petworth ‘The Last Judgment’ (B642, below, p. 228). 6. In fact ancient textual variants indicate confusion among the tenses which suggest that the divine is already in the disciples as Blake suggests (Nestle–Aland 1993: 299; Metzger 1971: 245). 7. The heavenly depiction, or engraving, of earthly things, past, present and future, is a typical feature of Jewish apocalypses. Examples of this may be found in 1 Enoch 81:1–2; 93:2, where Enoch ascends to heaven to see what is written on the heavenly tablets, and in a Jewish apocalypse, roughly contemporary with the Book of Revelation, where the patriarch Abraham is said to have ascended to heaven and to have seen images of the future of human history (Apocalypse of Abraham 21–9; Sparks 1984: 363; Rowland 1982). This is similar in some respects to the moment in Book 1:441–463 of Virgil’s Aeneid when Aeneas comes across something very familiar, albeit in strange surroundings. When he comes to Carthage, he sees the events, of which he had been a part, depicted in murals in a temple. It touches him deeply, as, in this new place, the familiar images of his own past impinge on the present in new guise. 8. Blake depicted Nebuchadnezzar’s humiliation 1795/circa 1805, B301, cf. MHH plate 24, E44.

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9. Paulson’s comment that ‘Blake exposes the errors of the actual verbal and visual text of the Bible while preserving their truths’ (Paulson 1982: 121) encapsulates the practice of Sachkritik, see below, p. 239. 4 EXPLORING

THE CONTRARIES IN DIVINITY

1. Blake exploits to the full the different names for God ( Jehovah and Elohim) to explore the differences between the religion of the forgiveness of sins and satisfaction. Thus, in The Ghost of Abel Blake plays with the different names for God, initially contrasting Jehovah and Elohim and finally bringing the two together at the climax of the drama (E272; cf. ‘A Vision of the Last Judgment’, E559, below, p. 208, and McGann 1986). 2. The merkabah in Jewish tradition is so called because the wheels mentioned in Ezek 1:16 suggested that God rode on a throne-chariot, cf. Ecclesiasticus 49:8; Psa 18:10, the latter a passage Blake interpreted in a watercolour of 1805, B462, below, p. 141. 5 BLAKE

AND THE

‘B I B L E

OF

HELL’

1. Vanessa Mitchell has pointed out to me that Tolstoy in Anna Karenina (Part V, Ch xi) has Mikhaylov looking at his painting, Christ before Pilate, and describes his way of painting as being a process of stripping the covers off the idea (the true insight) until the true meaning is revealed. 2. The earlier date has been championed by several, including John Beer (1994). That dating has a degree of plausibility, given Blake’s contacts at this early time with aspects of religious heterodoxy, especially Swedenborgianism and an earlier possible knowledge of Moravianism (Beer 1994; Schuchard 2006). Though 1 Enoch was discussed as early as 1773 (Beer 1994; Bentley 1978; Evans 1954; Bredin 2001), the Enoch sketches seem to reflect the late style of Blake’s drawings. The inscription on the fourth of the sequence ‘No 26 next at 4 43’ is similar to those on the backs of many of the Dante series, one of which apparently has a drawing of Enoch on its reverse (Butlin 1981: 595). The fact that the 1796 watermark is found on the contemporary Dante drawings adds weight to the later date. Gyorgy Szonyi (to whom I am indebted for this information) has pointed out to me that an English translation was available from as early as 1715 when at least some of the early chapters of 1 Enoch were translated probably from the George Syncellus version by Johann Grabe in The History of the Angels, or Watchmen Written by Enoch the Patriarch (the translation starts with 1 Enoch 7, Laurence’s translation): ‘And it came pass, when the Sons of Men were increas’d, that very Beautiful Daughters were born to them: With these the Watchmen were in Love and burnt with desire toward them, which drew them into many Sins and Follies’ (Grabe 1715:179–80), also a summary of the early chapters of 1 Enoch in Purchas his pilgrimage (1613), 36–7. 3. Alternatively, could it be that we have a divine being surrounded by the h.ayyoth, the ‘Zoa’, all of whom are depicted as female in form? It is worth noting in this context that Marc Chagall in ‘Vision d’Ezéchiel’, gravure 104, La Bible, II (Paris: Edition Tériade, 1931-56), depicted the human figure among the h.ayyoth as a woman. 4. ‘The Sick Rose’ (E23) reflects the way in which sexual relationships ensnare and demonise women: ‘O Rose thou art sick./The invisible worm,/That flies in the night/In the howling storm:/Has found out thy bed/Of crimson joy:/And his dark secret love/Does thy life destroy.’ In the marginal designs for this poem, the rose is vulva-like but the rose is sick, because the worm has entered her ‘bed of crimson joy’, perhaps one of adultery. The poem offers a critique of the idealisation of chastity while ignoring continued male power over women. It is about the consequences of sexual love for a woman but also of her oppression. A woman protrudes from the vulva-like rose and through the experience of sexual intercourse is born into a new world of desire, oppression and blame. The worm is the phallic symbol of the man, whose ‘dark secret love’ brings both destruction and self-awareness, the consequence of eating the ‘forbidden fruit of the garden’ (Genesis 3). The effects of male lust, so graphically portrayed in the third of the Enoch sketches, depicts the invasiveness of the male angels (the

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sons of God). If women end up as temptresses (as in the fourth Enoch picture), it is because of the consequence of the abuse first perpetrated on the woman by men. 6 ‘W O U L D

TO

GOD

THAT ALL THE

LORD’S

PEOPLE WERE PROPHETS’

1. KJV has ‘would God that all the LORD’S people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit upon them!’ 2. There were several other eighteenth-century claimants to be the embodiment of the Woman Clothed with the Sun. Mother Ann Lee, embodying Revelation’s Woman, led a little group of Shakers from Manchester to upstate New York in 1774. After 1780 Sarah Flaxmer and Mrs Eyre appeared in London, filled with the Sun-Woman, and in Ayrshire, Mrs Buchan embodied both St John’s Woman and the Holy Spirit herself, readying her followers for the Second Coming (Burdon 1997: 99–100; Harrison 1979: 25–38; Juster 2003). Joanna Southcott’s dramatic ministry was far better known, and when Joanna announced that she had been visited by the Holy Ghost in 1813 thousands of followers in London and throughout England prepared themselves to welcome Shiloh, the male child of Revelation 12. Blake’s friends, William Sharp and William Owen Pughe, were among those attracted by Southcott’s prophetic ministry. 3. Joanna Southcott’s understanding of her inspired scriptural interpretation is analogous to what we find in one of the Dead Sea Scolls from the beginning of the Common Era. In it an anonymous figure called the Teacher of Righteousness is believed to have offered the definitive meaning of certain prophetic texts: ‘. . . and God told Habakkuk to write down that which would happen to the final generation, but he did not make known to him when time would come to an end. And as for that which he said, That he who reads may read it speedily [Habakkuk 2:2]: interpreted this concerns the Teacher of Righteousness, to whom God made known all the mysteries of the words of his servants the prophets’ (‘Habakkuk Commentary’, 1QpHab 7, Vermes 1995: 343). 4. ‘This is the day appointed by Him for the defeat and overthrow of the Prince of the kingdom of wickedness, and He will send eternal succour to the company of his redeemed light He will enlighten with joy (the children) of Israel; peace and blessing shall be with the company of God. He will raise up the kingdom of Michael in the midst of the gods, and the realm of Israel in the midst of all flesh’ (1QM 17:5; cf. Rev 12:7, Vermes 1995: 143). 5. Cf. Plate 46 of Jerusalem, where a car in which are seated a man and a woman is pulled by two lion-men (Paley 1991: 203–4). Its wheels are made of the coiled serpent (not a feature of Ezek 1). 7 WILLIAM BLAKE

AND THE RADICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE

BIBLE

1. On women writers like Mary Astell and M. Marsin, see Hill 1993: 407–9 and Burns 2001. Other examples that may be mentioned are Jacob Boehme (1575–1624), whose writings influenced early eighteenth-century writers like Jane Lead of the Philadelphian Society (Fischer 2004; O’Regan 2002). 2. In 1 John this is followed later by the words ‘if a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?’ (1 John 4:20), a passage which accurately summarises Blake’s sentiments. As the First Epistle of John puts it, dwelling in God is the life of the Spirit (1 John 4:13), and this is demonstrated in mutual love and the forgiveness of sins. 3. Ariel Hessayon has pointed out to me that in Cambridge MS Dd.12.68 fols 46–9: Chapter 14 there is a reference to John Denqui, ‘The sayings of a certaine divine of great note & name’ [extracts from Hans Denck, Widderuf (Basel, 1528)]. Fol. 46r reads: ‘I doe (saith he) preferr the holy script[ures] bef[ore] al[l] hum[a]ne treas[ure]; yet soe, that I doe not soe much esteeme yt as the word of god, wch is liuing, potent & eternall; & which is free, & at liberty from all ye elements of this world. For if that be g[od] hims[elf] it folloes yt it is a spirit (not ye letter) written without pen & inke, soe yt it can never be oblitterated. And for this cause, true felicity or ye word of g[od] is not tyed to ye scriptures. The reas[on] is bec[ause] it is impossible that

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4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

NOTES

TO PAGES

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by ye script[ures] alone an evell mind should be amended, though it may be ma[?] more learned.’ I am very grateful to Ariel Hessayon for this reference (see also Smith 1989:115). The extant writings span a short period of his life between 1648 and 1652. What strikes any reader of these writings is the extraordinary theological development that takes place between the The Mysterie of God (CHL i.255–312) and The New Law of Righteousness (CHL i.472–568). There can be barely a year between the two works but they inhabit totally different theological universes. The Mysterie of God is addressed to his former fellow citizens of Lancashire. Although it includes hints of the importance Winstanley attaches to immediate experience of God rather than book learning, evident in other works, on the whole it evinces fairly traditional beliefs about the Fall and Judgement, ending with what is in effect an extended meditation on passages from the Book of Revelation on divine judgement. It lacks the distinctive way in which Winstanley creatively relates biblical passages to political oppression and liberation in many of his other works. The different theological ethos of ‘The Mysterie of God’ raises the question whether this reflects a significantly earlier phase of Winstanley’s thinking (it is addressed, with an expression of fear of a hostile reception, ‘To my beloved Country-men of the County of LANCASTER’), possibly at a time when his beliefs were much more orthodox, even though the title page has the date 1648 (Sabine 1941: 79; CHL i.69–70). Even the related The Breaking of the Day of God has many more echoes of, and connections between, biblical images and contemporary politics. ‘Not a full year since, being quiet at my work, my heart was filled with sweet thoughts, and many things were revealed to me which I never read in books, nor heard from the mouth of any flesh, and when I began to speak of them, some people could not bear my words, and amongst those revelations this was one, That the earth shall be made a common Treasury of livelihood to whole mankind, without respect of persons; and I had a voice within me bad me declare it all abroad, which I did obey, for I declared it by word of mouth to wheresoever I came, then I was made to write a little book called, The New Law of Righteousnesse, and therein I declared it; yet my mind was not at rest, because nothing was acted, and thoughts run in me, that words and writings were all nothing, and must die, for action is the life of all, and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing. Within a little time I was made obedient to the word in that particular likewise; for I took my spade and went and broke the ground upon George-hill in Surrey, thereby declaring freedom to the Creation, and that the earth must be set free from entanglements of Lords and Landlords, and that it shall become a common Treasury to all, as it was first made and given to the sons of men.’ (Winstanley, A Watch-Word to the City of London and the Armie, August 1649, Sabine 1941: 315, 328–92; CHL ii.80) The original sin of private property is outlined in a text which has had extraordinary influence in the history of thought, the Theologia Germanica. This text, for which a foreword was written by Luther, contains passages about Adam’s sin which resemble what we find in ‘The New Law of Righteousness’ (Franckforter 1966, cf. chs 2–3; on Winstanley’s possible links with the ideas of Spiritual Anabaptism, Hudson 1948). Both the quest to move beyond the letter of Scripture to the inner meaning revealed through the divine spirit, and the ways in which this relates to the spiritual struggle within, are akin to the attitude towards the Bible evident in the work of Jacob Boehme (Fischer 2004: 52–4). Jacob Boehme saw the spirit within the words of the Bible also at work within the individual. Echoing 1 Cor 2:10–16, the spirit within both text and the individual is one and the same even if the outward form (the text and the human person) may be different. So, the understanding is about the engagement of the Spirit in the human person with the spirit which led to the writing of the text to be interpreted. The whole of life becomes a living of the life of Christ, whereby the Bible lies in the individual, and the psychological and the social interact one with another (Fischer 2004: 57). He describes the circumstances which led to the revolution in his life in the following way: ‘And now (my deare ones) every one under the Sun, I will onely point at the gate, thorow which I was led into that new City, new Hierusalem, and to the Spirits of just men, made perfect, and to God the judge of all. First, all my strength, my forces were utterly routed, my house I dwelt in fired; my father and mother forsook me, the wife of my bosom loathed me,

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mine old name was rotted, perished; and I was utterly plagued, consumed, damned, rammed, and sunke into nothing, into the bowels of the still Eternity (my mothers wombe) out of which I came naked, and whereto I returned again naked. And lying a while there, rapt up in silence, at length (the body of outward form being awake all this while) I heard with my outward eare (to my apprehension) a most terrible thunderclap, and after that a second. And upon the second thunder-clap, which was exceeding terrible, I saw a great body of light, like the light of the Sun, and red as fire, in the forme of a drum (as it were) whereupon with exceeding trembling and amazement on the flesh, and with joy unspeakable in the spirit, I clapt my hands, and cryed out, Amen, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Amen. And so lay trembling, sweating and smoaking (for the space of half an hour) at length with a loud voice (I inwardly) cryed out, Lord, what wilt thou do with me; my most excellent majesty and eternal glory (in me) answered & sayd, Fear not; I will take thee up into mine everlasting Kingdom. But thou shalt (first) drink a bitter cup, a bitter cup, a bitter cup; whereupon (being filled with exceeding amazement) I was thrown into the belly of hell (and take what you can of it in these expressions, though the matter is beyond expression) I was among all the Devils in hell, even in their most hideous hew. And under all this terrour, and amazement, there was a little spark of transcendent, transplendent, unspeakable glory, which survived, and sustained itself, triumphing, exulting, and exalting it self above all the Fiends. And . . . after a while, breath and life was returned into the form againe; whereupon I saw various streames of light (in the night) which appeared to the outward eye; and immediately I saw three hearts (or three appearances) in the form of hearts, of exceeding brightnesse; and immediately an innumerable company of hearts, filling each corner of the room where I was. And methoughts there was variety and distinction, as if there had been several hearts, and yet most strangely, and inexpressively complicated or folded up in unity. I clearly saw distinction, diversity, variety, and as clearly saw all swallowed up into unity. And it hath been my song many times since, within and without, unity, universality, universality, unity, Eternal Majesty, &c. And at this vision, a most strong, glorious voice uttered these words, The spirits of just men made perfect. The spirits &c., with whom I had as absolute, cleare, full communion, and in a two fold more familiar way, than ever I had outwardly with my dearest friends, and nearest relations. The visions and revelations of God, and the strong hand of eternal invisible almightinesse, was stretched out upon me, within me, for the space of foure dayes and nights, without intermission.’ (Fiery Flying Roll, Hopton 1987: 16–18) 9. Cf. Abiezer Coppe: ‘Oh dear hearts! let us look for, and hasten to the comming of the Day of God, wherein the Heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the Elements (Rudiments, first principles). (Imagine formall Prayer, formall Baptism, formall Supper &c) shall melt away, with fervent heate, into God; and all Forms, appearances, Types, Signes, Shadows, Flesh, do, and shall melt away (with fervent heate) into power, reallity, Truth, the thing signified, Substance, Spirit.’ (Some Sweet Sips, Smith 1983: 71) 10. Other examples that may be mentioned are Jacob Boehme (1575–1624), whose writings influenced early eighteenth-century writers like Jane Lead of the Philadelphian Society (Fischer 2004; O’Regan 2002), and women writers like Mary Astell and M. Marsin (Hill 1993:407–9; Burns 2001). 11. Rightly has Makdisi commented: ‘. . . we have arrived at a very different foundation of politics, aesthetics and social being from the one that would propel Locke and Paine – a foundation in which relations, associations, connections and affects carry much greater significance than mere transitory form. For now we might think of our being not in terms of fixed and definite units (forms) but rather in terms of ever-changing bundles of relations and affects temporarily condensing in particular forms on particular occasions but always continuing to participate in an infinite common being; and hence, we might think of our being in terms of our infinite desire to keep making connections and forming new lines of affect, generating new images, and indeed to think of the essence of our being as just such making, desiring, forming, changing, striving . . . this is a very different notion of being – essential not only to Winstanley, but also to the heterogeneous antinomian, Behmenist, Paracelsian, Hermetic, Brunian traditions which Blake himself would later tap into – from the one entertained by most of the radicals of the 1790s’ (Makdisi 2003: 291). Makdisi might also have added the

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writing of Ralph Cudworth, whose 1647 sermon was quoted earlier in this chapter (p.174): ‘The Life of divine Truths, is better expressed in Actions than in Words, because Actions are more Living things, than words; Words, are nothing but the dead Resemblances, and Pictures of those Truths, which live and breath in Actions: and the Kingdome of God (as the Apostle speaketh) consisteth not in Word, but in Life, and Power.’ 8 ‘F R O M

I M P U L S E N O T F R O M R U L E S ’:

BLAKE

AND

JESUS

1. This story has had a long and complex history in the biblical tradition. Not only has it been omitted in some ancient manuscripts of John’s gospel but occasionally being found elsewhere in the New Testament. Also, often it provoked perplexity and unease among commentators (Knust 2006). 2. In this respect it is very different from Rembrandt’s interpretation (1644; National Gallery, London), in which Rembrandt takes seriously the setting of the biblical passage in the Temple ( John 8:2). Another contrast between Blake’s and Rembrandt’s portrayals is that Blake has the woman standing, whereas she kneels in an attitude of reverence in the Rembrandt picture (Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s ‘Christ and the woman taken in adultery’, 1565, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, has Jesus stooping before her). 3. There is a fortuitous (?) juxtaposition of these lines in Blake’s notebook (Erdman and Moore 1977: N48–9) with two images. The first is a sketch of Nebuchadnezzar, in a similar pose to that which we find on The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 24 (also B301) and what appears to be the beginnings of a sketch of Cain standing over the body of Abel (B664). The first of these images relates to the wisdom learnt through experience and the second indicates the central importance of Cain as a lesson in the forgiveness of sins (Gen 4:15–16; and p.210 above). 4. This is a link with a long history. The woman who anoints Jesus is identified with Mary, sister of Martha, in John 12:3. In the parallel passage in Lk 7:38 the anonymous woman is described as one whose sins are many. In both the Lucan passage and the story of the Woman taken in Adultery in the Gospel of John, there is no condemnation, only an instruction to ‘go in peace’, in John to ‘sin no more’. Blake follows the Christian tradition, therefore, in identifying the woman with Mary Magdalene, and later makes this incident the occasion when Jesus cast the seven devils out of Magdalene, mentioned in Mark 16: 9 (the longer ending of Mark) as well as Luke 8:2. Strangely, this story was not often seen as one that threatened the supremacy of the law in religion as more often than not the concern of commentators was on the problematic textual attestation (Knust 2006). 5. In ‘God Writing upon the Tables of the Covenant’ the hair of the divinity being blown as in the famous’ Ancient of Days’ in the frontispiece to Europe A Prophecy – a wind from the right, from the snake symbolising revolution on the accompanying title page. 6. In an amazing sketch in Blake’s unfinished work The Four Zoas, there is a depiction of a woman with her womb depicted as a kind of shrine (Bentley 1963: 44, Night III). 7. ‘And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it’ (Col 2:13–15). 8. Blake’s interpretation anticipates what J. B. Lightfoot wrote of Colossians 2:15 ‘The powers of evil which had clung like a Nessus robe about his humanity, were torn off and cast aside for ever. And the victory of mankind is involved in the victory of Christ [my italics]. In His Cross we to are divested of the poisonous clinging garments of temptation and sin and death’ (Lightfoot 1904: 188, quoted in Moule 1962: 101). 9. Blake’s understanding may be contrasted with his parody of Thornton’s version. This was preceded by a note which stated ‘This is Saying the Lord’s Prayer Backwards which they say Raises the Devil’ (E669). It has this effect because it gives a meaning opposite to what Blake believes the prayer actually means (so Paley 2003: 295):

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Our Father Augustus Caesar, who art in these thy Substantial Astronomical Telescopic Heavens, Holiness to thy Name or Title, & reverence to thy Shadow. Thy Kingship come upon Earth first & thence in Heaven. Give us day by day our Real Taxed Substantial Money bought Bread . . . deliver from the Holy Ghost so we call nature whatever cannot be Taxed [debt that was owing to him]; for all is debts & Taxes between Caesar & us & one another; lead us not to read the Bible, but let our Bible be Virgil & Shakspeare; & deliver us from Poverty in Jesus, that Evil one. For thine is the Kingship, or Allegoric Godship, & the Power, or War, & the Glory, or Law, Ages after Ages in thy Descendants; for God is only an Allegory of Kings & nothing Else Amen (Keynes, 788–9; Paley 2003: 296, E669). 10. Incidentally, such agnosticism over Mary’s virginity may also be apparent in the quatrain about Mary and Blake’s contemporary, Joanna Southcott: ‘Whate’er is done to her she cannot know, And if you’ll ask her she will swear it so. Whether ’tis good or evil none’s to blame: No one can take the pride, no one the shame’ (‘On the Virginity of the Virgin Mary & Johanna Southcott’, K418, E501). 11. Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them (Matthew 18:15–20). 9 ANTINOMIANISM, ATONEMENT AND LIFE DIVINE BODY: BLAKE AND PAUL

IN THE

1. C. H. Dodd summarised this brilliantly in his chapter on ‘The Law of Christ’ in Gospel and Law: ‘It turns out that the law of Christ works by setting up a process within us which is itself ethical activity. . . . The precepts cannot be directly transferred from the written page to action. They must become, through reflection and through effort, increasingly a part of our total outlook upon life, of the total bias of our minds, and then they will find expression in action appropriate to the changing situations in which we find ourselves. That is what I take to be the meaning of the “law written on the heart”’ (Dodd 1953: 77). Blake would probably not have disagreed. 2. ‘I saw a chapel all of gold/That none did dare to enter in/And many weeping stood without/ Weeping mourning worshipping/I saw a serpent rise between/The white pillars of the door/ And he forcd & forcd & forcd/Down the golden hinges tore/And along the pavement sweet/Set with pearls & rubies bright/All his slimy length he drew/Till upon the altar white/Vomiting his poison out/On the bread & on the wine/So I turnd into a sty/And laid me down among the swine’ (E467). 10 I N T E R P R E T I N G

THE

BIBLE

THROUGH IMAGES

1. Butlin (B401) points out the similarity to the second series of illustrations of Milton’s On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity (B542 1) and comments that ‘the use of a double source of light here and in the probable pendant “The Adoration of the King” (B402) may have been suggested by Rembrandt (e.g. “The Adoration of the Shepherds”, 1646, now in the National Gallery, London . . . which only reached London in 1801, but which Blake could have known from an engraving)’. 2. Robert Southwell’s ‘Burning Babe’ (1595) with its reference to ‘A pretty babe all burning bright did in the air appear’, a Christmas day vision of the poet, is also relevant to Blake’s ‘Nativity’ (thanks to Vanessa Mitchell for this reference).

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3. Blake’s depiction of the celestial Christ-child raises the possibility that his image of the infant Jesus reflects the belief that Jesus had celestial flesh, not flesh and blood (a doctrine known as docetism). This was propounded by Melchior Hoffman, who viewed Christ as the possessor of celestial flesh (Deppermann 1987: 223–9). An advocate of the Melchiorite position in England had been Matthew Caffyn (1628–1715), a leader of the Kent and Sussex General Baptists (further Underwood 1997: 123 n.23; Spivey 2004. I am grateful to Professor John Briggs, Director of the Centre for Baptist History and Heritage, Regent’s Park College, Oxford, for his advice about early Baptist history). The followers of Joanna Southcott also believed in the spiritual birth of the messiah, Joanna explained her pregnancy and death as the giving birth to the messiah who was snatched up to heaven after a spiritual birth (Rev 12:5; Harrison 1979). In the second century CE the proto-orthodox Justin Martyr entertained views remarkably similar to Hoffman about the heavenly character of Jesus’ blood (Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 54; 63; 76). It is possible that Blake may have entertained such ideas. Thus in ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ we read ‘Or such a body as might not feel The passions that with Sinners deal’ (E877), which may suggest that such ideas are at least entertained (though by contrast elsewhere we find ‘he took on Sin in the Virgins Womb And put it off on the Cross & Tomb’, which suggests human flesh like the rest of humanity, ‘Everlasting Gospel’, E524). 4. In Blake’s ‘Epitome of James Hervey’s Meditations’ (1820, B770) the Transfiguration replaces the cross on the altar and is directly above the bread and the wine. 5. There is a similar depiction in Blake’s illustration of Dante’s Purgatorio xxxii. 85–7, 142–53 (B812 89). There is nothing in Dante’s work about what is worn on the heads of the monsters, but Blake gives them crowns, warriors’ helmets and a papal tiara (Paley 2003: 162–3). 6. One of the puzzling things about Blake’s detailed commentary on the Petworth version of the Last Judgment (‘Design of the Last Judgment’, E552) is that it is at odds with his words written to Dr Trusler with regard to his hermeneutical method: ‘The wisest of the ancients consider’d what is not too explicit as the fittest for instruction, because it rouzes the faculties to act’ (E702). Blake seems not to be allowing the faculties to act here. One can only assume that this represents the kind of compromise he felt he had to make in order to accommodate his patron. After all, he had fallen foul of Dr Trusler because of the inability of a patron to understand his images. Nevertheless, the existence of this, and another, lengthy written commentary on ‘The Last Judgment’ (E552–4) suggests that he was prepared to adopt a more explicitly didactic mode later in his life. 7. The womb into which one enters is depicted as ‘a little model chapel of God’, a notion that appears to be reflected in one of the marginal drawings which accompany Blake’s The Four Zoas (f. 22v, Bentley 1963: 44, Night III, 1797). Here Blake sketched a naked woman whose womb has been changed into a shrine with a statue, penis-like, at its centre. 8. This aspect of Blake’s social radicalism is a complement to his political radicalism. Elsewhere, Blake wrote scathingly about the ‘Marriage hearse’ in ‘London’ (E27) and glossed Jesus’ words in Luke 20:34–6 in J30:15 that the spirits who rest in Eternity ‘neither marry nor are given in marriage’ (E176). ‘The doors of marriage are open, and the Priests in rustling scales/ Rush into reptile coverts, hiding from the fires of Orc’, Blake wrote echoing Revelation 6:15, and underlining his belief that the millennial hope had no place for marriage, which was an institution of the old age (America A Prophecy, 15:19, E57). 9. Similarly, in Blake’s ‘Jacob’s Dream’, Gen 28:11–17 (c. 1805; British Museum, B438, inscribed ‘Gen XXVIII c. 12v’), we also find women ascending and descending a staircase, the biblical ladder set up between heaven and earth. The beings on the ladder seem oblivious of Jacob. They carry their baskets of fruit, their jars, scrolls and compasses as if about some celestial errand (cf. Hebrews 1:14: ‘Are not all angels spirits in the divine service, sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?’). ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ epitomises Blake’s religion in that Bethel is to be found everywhere and is not confined to some sacred space. Echoes of Genesis 28:12 (along with Rev 1:9 and 1 Peter 2:9) are found in one of his marginal notes to Watson’s Apology: ‘henceforth every man may converse with God & be a

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King & Priest in his own house’ (‘Annotations to Watson’s Apology’, E615). ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ depicts the way in which the Beyond opens up in a dream or vision (echoes here of the importance of ‘dreams and visions of the night’ in Job 4:13; 7:14, which is an important Leitmotiv in the Job sequence; further, Prickett and Strathmann 2006: 127). 10. Bindman has a slightly different view, in which he suggests that a child ‘sees beyond the confines of this world, closed in by the parapet, to the real book of life beyond; perhaps the watercolour is an allegory of the letter and the spirit’. He describes the picture as a school in which children are working from books under angelic guidance, and in which a child is led by her mother to be greeted by an angel (Bindman 1977: 31). APPENDIX I EXTRACT FROM WILLIAM BLAKE’S N O T E B O O K , ‘T H E E V E R L A S T I N G G O S P E L ’ 1. This comment in pencil is rightly taken by Erdman (1977: N48 transcript) as a comment on the lines written at right angles: ‘Did Jesus teach Doubt or did he Give any lessons of Philosophy Charge Visionaries with Decieving Or call Men wise for not Believing’. 2. Matt 23:2. 3. Deut 29:20; Rev 6:14. 4. Psa 18:7; Psa 68:8. 5. Exod 20:24. One might conjecture ‘pulling’ rather than ‘putting’, though we should note that Blake did not always cross his t’s in his informal writing, as we see elsewhere in this poem (lines 7, 84, 92; cf. lines 14, 38, 49). 6. Exod 31:18; John 8:6. 7. Exod 14:19 (explicitly mentioned by Blake E559). 8. Numbers 12:10. 9. Ezek 28:12–14. 10. Gen 22:16 and Isa 45:23. 11. Rom 7:24; 11:32a; Gal 3:10, 23. 12. John 8:10–11. 13. Gen 6:2; 1 Enoch 6–9. 14. 1 Cor 3:16; 6:19. 15. Mark 3: 29. 16. Col 2:13–15.

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Tyndale, W., The Obedience of a Christian Man, edited and with an introduction and notes by David Daniell (London: Penguin, 2000) Underwood, T.L., Primitivism, Radicalism, and the Lamb’s War: The Baptist–Quaker Conflict in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997) ——, The Acts of the Witnesses: the Autobiography of Ludowick Muggleton and other early Muggletonian Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) Urbach, E.E., The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975) Van Braght, T. J., Martyrs Mirror (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1950) VanderKam, J.C. and W. Adler, The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1996) Vermes, G., The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, revised and extended 4th edn (London: Penguin, 1995) Viscomi, J., Blake and the Idea of the Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993) Watson, F., Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (Edinburgh and New York: T & T Clark, 2004) Weiss, J., Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of God (London: SCM, 1971) Wengst, K., Pax Romana and the Peace of Christ (London: SCM, 1987) Westermann, C., Genesis 1–11 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994) Williams, R.D., Arius: Heresy and Tradition (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1987) Wicksteed, J. H., Blake’s Vision of the Book of Job, with reproductions of the illustrations, revised 2nd edn (London: Dent, 1924) Wink, W., Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984) Winterson, J., Oranges are Not the Only Fruit (London: Pandora, 1985) Wittreich, Jr, J.A., ‘Opening the seals: Blake’s epics and the Milton tradition’, in Blake’s Sublime Allegory: Essays on ‘The Four Zoas’, ‘Milton’, and ‘Jerusalem’, ed. S. Curran and J.A. Wittreich, Jr, (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1973): 23–58 Wright, A., Blake’s Job: A Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972) Wolfson, E.R., Through A Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994) Zizek, S., The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity (London: MIT Press, 2004) ——, Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle (London: Verso: 2004)

Index of Blake’s texts and illuminated books The references, which are printed below in parentheses as E1 etc., normally follow the order of the 1988 Erdman edition of The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake. Plate references to images in the illuminated books are to the William Blake Trust/Tate Gallery edition. All Religions are One (E1) 71, 128, 147, 166 There is no Natural Religion (E3) 28, 71, 101, 236 Songs of Innocence and of Experience Preface (E7) 46, 90, 92 ‘The Lamb’ (E8) 225 ‘The Divine Image’ (E12) 142, 179 192 ‘Holy Thursday’ (E13 and 19) 122, 137, 152–6 ‘The Sick Rose’ (E23) 252 ‘The Tyger’ (E24–5) 71 ‘The Garden of Love’ (E26) 2, 37 ‘London’ (E26–7) 122, 152–3, 192, 258 ‘The Human Abstract’ (E27) 35, 82, 95, 101–2, 142 ‘A Poison Tree’ (E28) 112 ‘Infant Sorrow’ (E28) 219 ‘A Little Girl Lost’ (E29) 188 ‘Voice of Ancient Bard’ (E31) 69 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 2–3 (E33–4) 71, 91 3 (E34) 33, 87–8, 91, 186, 233 4 (E34 27) 80, 88, 130, 235 5 (E34) 25, 78, 92 6 (E35) 92, 239 7 (E36) 122 9 (E37) 66 10 (E38) 89, 93 11 (E38) 236 12, (E38) 127, 236

14 (E39) 15, 23, 30, 86, 91. 94, 240 16–17 (E40) 106, 160, 199 19 (E42) 92–3 20 (E42) 100, 180, 199, 234 22–4 (E43–4) 93, 190, 238 23–24 (E43) 86, 93, 190, 191, 238 24 (E44) 87, 94, 97, 251 27 (E45) 87, 94, 118, 215, 233 The Visions of the Daughters of Albion 117–18 America A Prophecy 94, 129, 136 Frontispiece 155 15:19 (E57) 258 16 (E59) 137 Europe A Prophecy 4, 122, 129 Preface 23, 27, 256 1 (E60) 129 5 (E62) 140 10:6–8 (E63) 20 15:9 (E66) 130 Plate 7(8) (E62) 30 Plate 8(9) 155 12 (14) (E64; Erdman plate 11) 4, 33, 97, 102, 250 Plate 17(18) 28 The Song of Los, 3:21 (E67) 130 The First Book of Urizen 97–102 2:1–4 (E70) 97–8 2:5 (E70) 98

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1x 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 38R

274

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 38R

INDEX

OF

BLAKE’S

TEXTS AND ILLUMINATED BOOKS

2:7–8 (E72) 101 3:14 (E74) 102 5:39 (E74) 99 7–8 (E74) 99 10:44 (E75) 97 20(18): 39–40 (E81) 100, 250 25:22 (E82) 33 Plates Frontispiece 23: 39, 97–8 Plate 3: 4, 95, 99 Plate 5: 100 Plate 6: 100 Milton A Poem Preface (Copies A and B) (E95–6) 64, 120–1, 156 2:12 (E96) 61 14(15):13 (E108) 189 14(15):28–32 (E108) 47, 78, 100 17(19):11 (E110) 68 19(21):18 (E112) 142 22(24):4–5 (E116) 121 22(24):5–14 (E116–17) 130 29(31):55–6 (E128) 68 32(35):10–15 (E131) 26, 187 32(35):30–8 (E132) 190 34(38):35 (E134) 142 36(40):21 (E137) 121, 130 37(41):20–5 (E137) 27 37(41):43 (E138) 1, 151, 156 39(44):1 (E140) 78 40(46):22 (E142) 84 40(46):36 (E142) 136 41(48):4–6 (E142) 189 Plate 13 136 Plate 15 47, 71, 78, 98, 100, 190, 208, 235 Plate 43(21) 237 Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion 3 (E145) 17, 211 4:1–2 (E146) 211 4:6–8 (E146) 219 4: 18–19 (E146) 62 4:31–2 (E147) 130 5:16–22 (E147) 130, 211 5:18 (E147) 121 5:22 (E147) 47, 208 5:24 (E147) 148 5:59 (E148) 211 7:12 (E149) 231

7:70 (E150) 148 9:9 (E152) 148 10:7–16 (E152–3) 90, 102, 215–16 10:17 (E153) 148 10: 20–1 (E153) 3 12:30–6 (E155) 148 12:41 (E155) 150 12–13 (E155–6) 148 15:6–20 (E159) 143 16:61–4 (E161) 68 17:33–4 (E162) 80, 90 18:12 (E163) 149 21:3–10 (E166) 35 24:20 (E169) 148 24:23 (E169) 211 24:59 (E170) 148 25:12 (E170) 148 26 (E171) 149 27 (E171) 144, 213, 249–50 27:6 (E171) 148 27:30–3 (E172) 27 27:76 (E173) 47, 78 29(33):1 (E175) 211 30(34): 15 (E176) 258 31(35):5 (E177) 148 32(36):31 (E178) 142 32(36):56 (E179) 211 33(37):11 (E179) 211 34(38):20–1 (E180) 17 37(image plate 41) (E184) 58 39(44):30 (E187) 121 39(44):31 (E187) 130 40 (45):15 (E187) 148 42:7 (E189) 211 42:74 (E190) 106 45(31):44–5 (E195) 149 46 (image) 253 49:24–6 (E198) 47, 208 49: 49–55 (E199) 212 49:67 (E199) 78, 79 50:16 (E200) 149 53:15 (E 203) 148 54:17 (E203) 147 54:32 (E204) 211 57:8 (E207) 149 60:57 (E211) 211 61:1–46 (E212) 196–9, 207, 209 61:22 (E212) 211 62:16 (E213) 45 65:63 (E217) 27 68:59 (E222) 215 69:40 (E223) 215 70:16 (E224) 249 71:59 (E226) 211 74:13 (E229) 211

INDEX

OF

BLAKE’S

TEXTS AND ILLUMINATED BOOKS

75 (image) 114,149 75:18–20 (E231) 114 75:20 (E231) 1, 149, 156 Plate 76: 20, 223 77 (E232–3) 148, 207 77:12 (E232) 106 78:10 (E233) 121 85:10 (E244) 147 86 (E244) 148 86:1–2 (E244) 147 86:4 (E244) 147, 215 86:18–19 (E244) 147 86:20 (E244) 147 88:49–54 (E247) 130–1 89:10 (E248) 136 89:53 (E249) 1, 156, 242 90:35–8 (E250) 78, 189 91: 1–30 (E251) 62 93 (image) (E253) 40 93:18–19 (E253) 130 96:14–16 (E255) 62 96 (E255–6) 61 96:27 (E256) 209 96:35–7 (E256) 147, 211, 228 96:38–43 (E256) 211 97–9 (E256–8) 149 98:8–12 (E257) 11, 84, 143, 147,150 98:12 (E257) 141 98:22 (E257) 142 98: 28 (E 257) 144 99 (E258–9) 61, 211 The Ghost of Abel (E272) 21, 57, 90, 97, 116, 146, 208–10, 250, 252 Laocöon (E273–5) 5, 26, 73, 195, 210 Four Zoas Preface (E300) 190 i:466 (E310) 109 viii:190–99 (E376) 78 viii:481–4 (E383) 136, 189–90 viii:595–601 (E385) 1, 84, 146 ix:281–5 (E393) 143 ix:844–5 (E407) 228 ix:637–40 13 (E402) 62 Facsimile: ‘The Four Zoas’ (Bentley 1963: 43, Night III) 235

275

Facsimile: ‘The Four Zoas’ (Bentley 1963: 44, Night III) 256 Miscellaneous poems ‘Nobodaddy’ (E471) 24, 84 ‘Auguries of Innocence’ (E491) 36, 71, 135, 234 ‘The French Revolution’ (E291) 40, 250 ‘My Spectre’ (E477) 211 ‘When Klopstock England defied’ (E500–1) 185 ‘A Chapel all of Gold’ (E467) 215, 257 ‘This the Wine & this the Bread’ (E477) 211 ‘On the Virginity of the Virgin Mary & Johanna Southcott’ (E551) 122 The Everlasting Gospel (E519–24) 73, 74, 79, 99, 136, 159, 182–94, 243–5, 259 Descriptive Catalogue (E542–3) 21, 234 Design of the Last Judgment (E552) 228, 246–8 A Vision of the Last Judgment (E562) 58, 73, 90, 135, 136, 218, 228, 230, 234 Annotations Lavater (E599) 160 Watson’s ‘Apology’ (E615) 2, 3, 7–8, 15, 16, 93, 128, 132, 148, 157, 159, 191, 192, 194–5, 199, 227, 240, 258 Berkeley (E664) 2, 233 Thornton (E667–9) 22, 56, 58, 61, 85, 195, 229 Letters Trusler, 23 August 1799 (E702–3) 5–7, 136, 221, 234 Butts 2 October 1800 (E711–14) 133–5 Butts 22 Nov 1802 (E720–2) 3, 72, 101 James Blake 30 January 1803 (E727) 190 Butts, 6 July 1803 (E730) 131, 142 Hayley, 14 January, 1804 (E740) 66 Hayley, 23 October, 1804 (E756) 133

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 38R

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 38R

Index of references to Blake’s images

Grateful thanks for permission to use images in their collections are offered to those institutions indicated (*) in the list below. Also the Yale Center for British Art for The First Book of Urizen (Frontispiece), Songs of Innocence and Experience (‘London’ and ‘Holy Thursday’) and Jerusalem (Plate 76). IMAGES

* Illustrations of the Book of Job, London, 1825, Bodleian Library, Oxford, 13–72 ‘Enoch’, lithograph (Bindman, D., Toomey, D. The complete graphic works of William Blake, London: Thames & Hudson,1978, 413), 106 * ‘An Allegory of the Bible’ (Tate Gallery, London, 1780–5, B127), 231–2 ‘Death of Ezekiel’s Wife’ (Philadelphia Museum of Art, c. 1785, B166), 131 ‘Albion Rose’ (British Museum, 1794, B262 1), 33 * ‘Elohim Creating Adam’ (Tate Gallery, 1795, B289), 46, 79, 97 ‘God Judging Adam’, (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1795, B295), 33, 250 ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ (Tate Gallery, London, 1795, B301), 251 ‘Newton’ (Tate Gallery, London 1795, B306), 101 * Edward Young’s Night Thoughts Title Page ‘Night the Eighth ‘Virtue’s Apology’ (British Museum, 1795–7, B330 345), 226 ‘Eve Tempted by the Serpent’ (Victoria and Albert Museum, 1799–1800, B379), 96–7 ‘The Judgment of Solomon’ (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 1799–1800, B392), 220 ‘The Angel Gabriel appearing to Zacharias’ (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York c. 1799–1800, B400), 218 ‘The Nativity’ (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1799–1800, B401), 217–20 ‘The Adoration of the Kings’ (Brighton Art Gallery, 1799, B402), 218 ‘Christ blessing the lttle Children’ (Tate Gallery, 1799, London, B419), 222 * ‘Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem’ (Pollok House, Glasgow, 1800, B422), 221–2 ‘God Blessing the Seventh Day’ (private collection, c. 1805, B434), 19, 52, 107 ‘The Angel of the Divine presence clothing Adam and Eve with coats of skins’ (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 1803, B436), 26, 74, 187 ‘Noah and the Rainbow (Houghton Library, Harvard, 1803–5, B437), 62 * ‘Jacob’s Dream’ (British Museum, 1805, B438), 50, 228, 258 ‘Pestilence, The Death of the First–Born’ (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, c. 1805, B442), 29, 250 ‘God Writing upon the Tables of the Covenant’ (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, c. 1805, B448), 186 ‘Goliath Cursing David’ (Museum of Fine Art, Boston, c. 1803–5, B457), 250. ‘The Ghost of Samuel appearing to Saul’ (National Gallery of Art, Washington, c. 1800, B458), 250 ‘Job confessing his presumption to God who answers from the whirlwind’ (National Gallery of Scotland, c. 1803–5, B461), 51

INDEX

OF REFERENCES TO

BLAKE’S

IMAGES

277

* ‘David delivered out of many Waters: “He rode upon the Cherubim” ’ (Tate Gallery, London, c. 1805, B462), 142 ‘By the Waters of Babylon’, (Fogg Art Museum, Harvard, 1806, B466), 21 * ‘Ezekiel’s Wheels’ (Boston Museum of Art, 1803, B468), 19, 107, 141, 144, 224 * ‘Woman taken in Adultery’ (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, c. 1803–5, B486), 181–2 *‘The Baptism of Christ’ (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, c. 1803, B475), 220 ‘The Transfiguration’ (Victoria and Albert Museum, c. 1800, B484), 221 * ‘The Soldiers casting Lots for Christ’s Garments’ (1800; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 1800, B495), 222–3 ‘Christ in the Sepulchre guarded by Angels’ (Victoria and Albert Museum, c. 1805, B500), 223 * ‘The Ascension’ (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 1803–5, B505), 189 ‘The Conversion of Saul’ (Huntington Library, c. 1800, B506), 221 * ‘The Four and Twenty Elders’ (Tate Gallery, London, 1803–5. B515), 21, 114, 141, 144–5, 224 ‘Death on a Pale Horse’ (Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, c. 1800, B517), 225 ‘And the Angel which I saw lifted up his hand’ (Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art, New York, c. 1803, B518), 96 ‘The Great Red Dragon and Woman Clothed with the Sun’ (Brooklyn Museum, New York, c. 1803–5, B519; and National Gallery of Art, Washington, c. 1805, B520), 226 ‘The Number of the Beast is 666’ (Rosenbach Foundation, Philadelphia, c. 1805, B522) 226 * ‘The Whore of Babylon’ (British Museum, 1809, B523) 226 ‘He cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up’ (Fogg Art Museum, Harvard, c.1800, B524), 227 ‘The River of Life’ (Tate Gallery, London, c 1805, B525), 227 ‘Temptation and Fall of Eve, ‘Paradise Lost’ series (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1808, B536 9), 43, 223, 251 ‘The Annunciation to the Shepherds’ (Whitworth Gallery Manchester, 1809, B538 2), 19, 52, 108 ‘The Flight of Moloch’ (Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, 1809, B538 5), 28, 43, 250 ‘The Descent of Peace’, Milton’s ‘Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ (Huntington c. 1815, B542 1), 218 ‘Christ’s Troubled Dream’, Paradise Regained (Fitzwilliam, 1816–20, B544 8), 46 Watercolours illustrating the Book of Job (Butts, Pierpoint Morgan, c. 1805–6, 1821–7, B550 (* Plate 11 ‘Job’s Night Vision) and Linnell Fogg Museum Harvard, c. 1821, B551), 14 * ‘The Vision of the Last Judgment’ (Petworth House, 1808, B642), 48, 209, 228 ‘The Spiritual Form of Nelson guiding Leviathan’ (Tate Gallery, c. 1805–9, B 649), 33, 55 ‘The Spiritual Form of Pitt guiding Behemoth’ (Tate Gallery, c. 1805, B651), 34, 52, 55 ‘Epitome of James Hervey’s ‘Meditations among the Tombs’ (Tate Gallery London, 1820, B770), 50, 106, 228, 258 * ‘The Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve’ (Tate Gallery, c. 1826, B806), 210 Illustrations to Dante ‘s ‘Divine Comedy’ (Tate Gallery, 1824–7, B812–26), 14, 110, 251, 258 * Beatrice speaking to Dante from ‘that celestial chariot’ (Tate Gallery, London, 1824–7, B812 88), 144 Illustrated Manuscript Copy of Genesis (Huntington Library, B828, 1826–7), 14, 95–6, 143, 210 * Five Illustrations to the Book of Enoch (The National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1824–7, B827), 14, 21, 102–18

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 38R

Index of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and other Jewish texts Genesis 1 52, 95, 144 1:2 95, 187 1: 18 96, 97 1:26–7 74 2:7 74 2:16 95 2:17 90 3 102, 208 3:1–3 2, 95 3:6 165 3:7 96 3:14–19 95, 122–3, 186 3:21 187 3:24 30, 91 4 96, 165 4:7 32 4:8 95 4:15–16 210 5:24 77, 103, 106, 250 6 86, 250 6:1–4 52, 95, 103, 104, 259 6:6 33 8:20 95 12:2 75 12:6 9 15:6 9 15:18 75 16: 10–12 75 17: 5 75, 250 17: 23–4 9 18:1 249 19:1 75 20:17 250 21:17 75 22:1 27, 75 22:11–12 75 22: 15–18 75, 187, 259 28:10–12 50, 249, 258 31:11 and 13 75, 250

37:5–11 137 49:10 125 Exodus 3 77, 250 4:6 187 14:19 26, 73, 249, 259 15:20 71 20: 12–14 43, 46 20:24 186, 259 21:23 209 23:20 77 25:20 223 27:2 22 28:15–29 147 28:36 147 29:20 98 31:18 186, 259 32 78 39:30 147 Leviticus 13:45–6 187 18:8 204 18:21 27 20:2–5 27 Numbers 5:11–31 197 11:29 120, 139 12:10 187, 259 27:1–11 68 36:3 68 Deuteronomy 4:2 152 6:4 85 17:7 204 18:15–20 139 22:20–1 197

INDEX

OF

28:15 185 29:20 185, 259 29:23 185 Joshua 2:1 149 6 and 8 8 Judges 13: 8–23 74 1 Samuel 2:6–7 66 6:7 231 10:6–13 137 15:27–8 138 2 Samuel 6:7 231 7:13 78 1 Kings 3:16–28 220 8:19 78 8:37 35 18 138 19:3–5 131 2 Kings 2:9 190 2:11 103 2:13 190 2:19 147 23:10 27 1 Chronicles 21:1 79 Job 1:1 16 1:5 16, 22 1:7 30 1:8 26 1:12 28, 31 1:14 30 1:16 28, 30 1:17 30 1:18–19 28 1:2 35 1:21 35 2:1–2 26, 30 2:6 46, 79 2:7 33 2:8–9 22, 34, 35 2:10 36

O L D T E S T A M E N T /H E B R E W B I B L E

AND OTHER

JEWISH

TEXTS

2:12–13 35, 37, 79 3:3 37 3:7 37 4:5–15 37 39, 259 4: 17–18 16, 39–40, 198 6:3 251 7:14 43 11:7–8 57 12:4 40 13:15 42 14:1–2 41–2 19:21–2 42, 46 19:22–7 26, 42, 43, 45, 46, 251 20:5 44 23:10 42 29:5 25 30:17 44 30:25 31 32:2 48 32:3 48 32:6 48 32:8–9 50 33:14 48 33:15 48 33:17 48 33:23–4 50 34:21 48 35:5–6 48 36:17 55, 57 36:29 55 37:11–12 55 38–41 17, 52, 60, 66 38:28 52 40:15 54 40:19 55 41:34 55 42:5 5, 14, 16, 60, 72, 85, 167, 239 42:7–8 10, 64 42:9 64 42:11 66 42:12 69, 80 42:15 66 Psalms 8:3–4 60 17:15 26, 27 18:7 185, 259 18: 10 142, 252 51:16 70 68:8 185, 259 82:1 74 87:4 149 104:3 52 104:9 55, 95 137:3–4 21, 31

279

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 38R

280 I N D E X

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 38R

OF

O L D T E S T A M E N T /H E B R E W B I B L E

139:8 66, 71 66 139:17 66 Ecclesiastes 12:5–6 35 Isaiah 6 131, 138, 139, 147 6:2 142 6:8 74, 140 7:10–17 129, 159 14:12 187 23 138 40–66 95, 138 40:3 208 40:11 222 40:12–31 52 42:1 139 43:2 228 45:5 98 45:23 187, 259 49:1 140 51:9–10 95 55:1 199 63: 1 231 63:9 26 63:16 26 64:8 26 Jeremiah 1:5 140 1: 11 138 15:10 and 20 131, 139 17:5–8 131 20:7–12 131 31:31–4 164–5, 168, 203, 207, 249 32:35 27 46–9 138 Ezekiel 1:1 138–9, 144–5 1:4–5,27; 8:2 140–2 1:6,11 142 1:10 141, 144 1:16 143, 252 1:18 224 1:26–7 75–6, 141, 142, 213, 224 3:1,4,5 138, 238 8:2 75–6, 142 9:3 153 24 131 28:11 187 28: 12–17 30, 91, 187, 259 28:16 30, 91

AND OTHER

JEWISH

TEXTS

36: 25–8 140, 203–4, 207 40–48 138, 148 40:4 152 43: 2–3 27 43:7 141 45:22 132 47:1 227 Daniel 2:44–5 162 4:13 17, 23 106 4:33–7 71, 91, 94 7 132, 139, 171, 227 7:9 26, 27, 109, 114 8:15–6 137 9:27 137, 148 10:5–7 137 10:13,21 137, 148 12 19, 123, 135 Hosea 2:14 90 Joel 2:1 63 Amos 3:8 131 5:25–27 78 7:1–9 138 Habakkuk 2:4 9 Zechariah 3:1 79 13 138 Malachi 3:2 148 The Book of Enoch (Ethiopic Apocalypse of Enoch or 1 Enoch) References follow Laurence’s translation with references in modern versions in parenthesis 1:1 (1:2) 104 2 (1:9) 102, 104, 107, 108 7–10 105, 187, 259 7 (6) 1–10 109, 226 8 :1 114 9 114 10:6 104 12:1–7 102–3, 104–6, 105, 201 12–15 99

INDEX

OF

O L D T E S T A M E N T /H E B R E W B I B L E

l4:8–25 103, 105, 107, 114, 118, 135, 139, 145 16:4–5 105, 116 17–35 105 18:14–16 115 19:1–3 109, 112 31:3–5 (32:6) 104, 105 40:1–10 104, 107 46:1 109 70:17 (71:14) 77 70 (71) 104 81:1–2 and 93:2 251 81:9 and 11 115 85:2 (86:1) 116 87:5 (88:1–3) 107, 116 88:73 136 2 Esdras 55, 106, 152 Apocalypse of Abraham 21–9 251 Testament of Job 46–53 68 Jubilees 4:20–4 106

AND OTHER

JEWISH

TEXTS

281

Dead Sea Scrolls 1QS 3 79, 251 1QM 137, 253 1QpHab 7 253 Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch 54:19 80 Wisdom of Solomon 3:1 88, 103 Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 89, 103, 105, 252 Flavius Josephus Jewish War vi. 281 and 301 138 Antiquities of the Jews xx. 97,167,185 138 Rabbinic texts Pirke Aboth 1:1 138 Tosefta Sotah 13:2 139 Sifre on Numbers 12:8 139 Genesis Rabbah 47:6; 69:3; 82:6 141 Targumim on Genesis 28:12 141 Mishnah Hagigah 2:1 144 Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 38b 77 Sefer Hekhalot, or 3 Enoch 77, 103

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 38R

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 38R

Index of New Testament and other early Christian texts Gospel of Matthew 1:19–24 196–9, 207 1:23 22, 159 3:13–17 220 4:1–11 79 5:9 126 5:17–18 205 5:23–4 158 5:32 205 5:34 126 5:44–5 64 5: 48 64 6:7 22 6:9–13 17, 21, 199 7:13–14 90 7:19 186 9:34 93 10:8–10 191 11:11–13 186, 205 11:25 7, 221 12:1–8 191 12:24 93 17:1–9 220 18:2–4, 7, 10 221 18:10 137, 221 18:15–20 199, 257 19:13–15 221–2 19:28 230 20:22–3 222 21:6–9, 14–16 221–2 21:11 139 23:2 185, 259 23:25 210 24:9 191 25:31–45 102, 179 228 27:13–14 191 27:35–38 222 Gospel of Mark 1:9–11 220

1:15 88 1:19 192 1:22 128 2:23 205 2:27 191 3:22 192–3 3:29 188, 259 3:33–4 160 6:4–5 139 7:19 186, 205 7:28 33 9:2–8 220 10:18 186 10:39–40 222 13:14 148 14:51–2 30 14:64 205 15:23–6, 33–35 222 16: 9 253 Gospel of Luke 1:7 218 1:11–13 218 1:17 121, 147 1:39–44 218 1:78 27 2:6–7 218 2:49 192 3:22 220 4: 18–21 139, 190 6:1 191 7:16 139 7:28 218 8:2–3 185, 187, 191 9:28–36 220 9:51–17:37 90 10:16 139 10:17–18 57 11:20 88 11:49–51 139

INDEX

OF

NEW TESTAMENT

13:31–3 139 15:1 100 15:25 71 16:16–18 205 16:21 33 19:44 156 20:34–6 258 22:15 191 Gospel of John 1:14 17 1:17 206 1:18 61, 196, 229 1: 29–34 220 3:4 229 3:5 230 5:18 206 5:24 190, 229 5:46 202, 206 6:14 139 6:46 61 7:6 88 7:16 140 7:23 206 8:1–11 181–94, 191, 200, 259 8:6 186, 259 8:18 139 9:14 206 10:30 60 10:33 206 11:47–50 149 12:3 246 12:31–3 57, 223 12:41 61 12:44 140 12:49–50 206 13:1 88 13:34 206 14: 7 60 14:9 60–1, 85 14:11; 16–17a 17, 60 14:21b, 17b 60 14: 23 60 14:20 17, 60, 61, 219 14:28 60, 61 15:13 209 16:2 191 16:12–13 238 17:22–4 191, 223 18:20 191 18:28–19:15 149, 191, 206 19:15 149 19:23–4 222 19: 34 230

AND OTHER EARLY

CHRISTIAN

TEXTS

20:6–7 91 20:25 56 Acts of the Apostles 1:1 190 1:9–10 189 2:17 139, 178, 190 4:32 165, 195 6–7, 11 205 7: 36–9, 44 77, 215 7:54 78 7:58 191 9:4 221 9:6 221 12:2 191 17:28 210 18: 14–15 215 21:21–3 201 Epistle to the Romans 3:21 202 3:24–5 207 3: 31 202 4:3 9 5:13 202 5:20 202 6:1–4 202–4, 208 6:22 212 7:12 202 7:15–22 88 7:24 46, 79, 187, 250 8:2 203 8:3 203 8:4 202 8:9 212 8:21 37, 187 10:4 200 11:25 201 11:32a 187, 259 12:1–2 64, 199, 211 13:8–10 202 15:4 201 15:27 65 16:25 201 First Epistle to the Corinthians 1:27–8 55, 57 2:9 209 2:10–16 22, 164, 168, 174–6, 177, 200, 203–4, 240, 254 3:1 204 3:16 and 6:19 188, 212, 215, 259 4:1 201 5:1–5 204

283

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 38R

284

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 38R

INDEX

OF

NEW TESTAMENT

5:6–8 205 5:13 205 9:20–1 201–2 10:11 201 11:13–16 239 12 211 12–13 199, 211 14:33–5 239 15:25–8 80, 150, 159, 180 15:51 201 16:15 204 Second Epistle to the Corinthians 3 201, 249 3:6 22, 23, 69, 200, 202, 249 3:18 220 4:4 79–80, 192, 209 5:1–4 65, 88 5:17 208 6:2 91, 201 11:14 44, 46 12:2–4 103, 135, 200 Epistle to the Galatians 1:12 16, 200 1:15 140 1:16 16, 200 2:20 203, 212 3: 8 9 3:10, 23 187, 259 3:11 9 3:13–19 77 3:19 202 3:21 202 3:26–8 239 4:24–9 9 5:14 202 6:2 199, 202 Epistle to the Ephesians 1:10 212 1:22–3 180 2:1–6 212 2:13 212 2:13–16 205, 208, 212 2:21–3 212 3:10 62 4: 5–6 159, 180 4:15–16 213 4:18 212 5:14 219 6:12 190 Epistle to the Philippians 2:22 135 3:6 16

AND OTHER EARLY

CHRISTIAN

TEXTS

Epistle to the Colossians 1:15 61, 229 1:15–20 213 1:17 213 2 135 2:3 61 2:9 61 2:10–15 79, 188–90, 208, 259 3:1 208 3:9 190 First Epistle to the Thessalonians 2:18 79 4:17 103, 230 Second Epistle to the Thessalonians 2:4 44 First Epistle to Timothy 2:12 239 The Epistle to the Hebrews 1:14 30 6:19–20 223 9:15–16 203 10:1 125 10:6 69 11:4 210 12:22 223 The Epistle of James 5:11 37 The First Epistle of Peter 1:19–20 209 2:9 258 3:19–20 102, 116 The First Epistle of John 2:27 168 3:2 17, 28, 60 3:18 176 4:13 253 4:16 160 4:20 253 2:27 168 The Epistle of Jude 14 86, 102, 104, 106, 108 The Revelation to John 1:9 258 1:12 144 1:14 109 3:20 155 4–5 114, 139, 145, 221, 225

INDEX

OF

NEW TESTAMENT

4:1 61 4:3 224 4:4 144, 155, 224 4:5 221, 224 4:7 144 4:8 142, 147 5:1 224–5 5:5–6 60, 136, 150, 225, 235 6:1 150 6:2 251 6:8 225 6:14 186, 259 6:16 104 7:9 222 7:13 155 7:16 156 7:17 136 8–9 and 11:15 226 9:11 147 10:1–2 96, 125, 138, 225 10:11 238 11 169 12:1 123, 151, 155, 170, 226 12:3 147 12:4 156, 226 12:5 103, 125 12:7–10 57, 137 12:9 79 13:1–2 147, 151, 171, 226 13:8 209 13:11 156, 226 13:16 153 14:6 159

AND OTHER EARLY

CHRISTIAN

TEXTS

15:3 70, 71 16 226 17 1, 114, 126, 147, 149, 226 17:14 150 19–22 150, 155 19:7 123 19:10 124 19:11–13 231, 251 20 155, 156, 193, 227 20:11–15 57 147, 150, 228 21 123, 147, 148, 152, 171 21:3 17 21:6 136 21:9,15 152 21:10 147 21:17–19 147 21:22–4 147 22:1–2 91, 136, 147, 150, 227 22:3–5 17, 28, 61, 228 22:4 17, 144 22:16 27 22:18–19 152 Other Works Epistle of Barnabas, 78, 90 Didache 90 Hypostasis of the Archons 83, 98 The Testimony of Truth 81–2 Gospel of Philipp 82 Irenaeus Adversus Haereses 96 The Protoevangelium of James 197, 219 The Ascension of Isaiah 219

285

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 38R

Index of names and subjects

Aaron 98, 147 Abel 119, 208–10 Adam 21, 26, 33, 46, 74, 78–82, 88, 91, 96–97, 106, 146, 163, 166, 187, 208, 210, 223, 246 Albion 34, 35, 62, 73, 117, 137, 143, 147, 148, 149, 210–16, 220, 223, 250 Allegory 10, 126, 131, 132, 161, 217, 231–2 Anabaptism 159, 202 ‘Analytics’ 93 Ancient of Days 23, 25, 27, 47, 73, 109, 256 Angel of the Divine Presence, Angel of the LORD 12, 21, 26, 55, 73–4, 83, 85, 185, 187 Angels 5, 19, 24, 27, 31, 32, 38, 44, 46, 52, 55, 59, 63, 68, 77–9, 87, 90–95, 102–18, 135, 137, 147, 150, 154–5, 160, 187, 189, 196–8, 209, 220, 223, 225, 226–8 Antinomianism 22, 126, 179, 185, 191, 200–6, 214 Anti–semitism 8 Apocalypse, apocalyptic (see also under visions) xiii, xvii, 3, 16, 28, 57, 61, 98, 103, 126, 135–7, 149–152, 155, 160, 208, 224–31 Astell, Mary (1666–1731) 159, 253 Atonement 57, 207–10 Augustine (354–430) 11, 80 Babylon 9, 21, 64, 95, 112, 114, 126, 138, 139, 144, 149, 226, 229 Baptism 139, 220, 247 Barth, Karl (1886–1968) 239–40 Behemoth and Leviathan 33, 52, 54–5, 92, 214 Blake, Catherine (1762–1831) xiv, 22, 66, 135 Boehme, Jacob (c. 1575–1624) 22, 79, 83, 119, 122, 145, 158, 161, 237 Body of Christ, Divine Body 3, 84, 132, 174, 210–14 ‘the book’ 4–5, 231–232 Botticelli, Alessandro (c. 1445–1510) 218 Brothers, Richard (1757–1824) 88, 122, 125–126, 129, 131–2

Bunyan, John (1628–88) 107 Butts, Thomas (1757–1845) xvi, 3,14, 66, 72, 101, 131, 133, 136, 142, 217, 224 Byron, George, Lord (1788–1824) 90, 146, 208 Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer 144, 233–4 Chariot (see also merkabah) 11, 52, 75–6, 90, 120–1, 131, 138, 140, 141, 142–5, 152, 193, 230 Chagall, Marc (1887–1985) 252 Chartres Cathedral 121 Cherub(im) 32, 55–6, 91, 142, 223, 247 Children 7, 26, 135, 154–6, 221–2, 227, 230, 231 Christ, see Jesus ‘Christus Victor’ doctrine of the cross, 209 ‘Code of Art’ 5, 88–9, 102, 200 Commandments, see under Law and obligation Coleridge, S.T. (1772–1834) 5, 240–1 Conscience 157, 177, 181 ‘Contraries’ 33, 36, 37, 46–7, 71, 73, 84–7, 90–2, 96, 102, 150, 154, 180, 186, 198, 209, 215, 216, 233 Conversion 1, 3, 33, 63, 85–6, 94, 95, 129, 171–3, 200, 221 Coppe, Abiezer (1619–1672) 62,127, 131–2, 161, 172–5, 255 Cross, crucifixion 79, 136, 146, 185, 188, 189, 190, 193–4, 203, 207–10, 218, 223, 229 Cudworth, Ralph (1617–1688) 50, 157, 161, 174–6 Dante Alighieri, (c. 1265–1321) 14, 107, 110, 144, 237 Decalogue, see commandments 43–5, 83 Demiurge 80, 102, 187, Denck, Hans (c. 1495–1527) 2, 161, 176–8

INDEX

OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS

287

Desire 2, 10, 37, 64, 87, 89, 92–4, 96, 101, 117, 118, 120, 133, 163, 165, 236 Diggers, see also Winstanley 162–3 Divine Body, see Body of Christ Docetism 258 Dragon 1, 55, 112, 114, 146–7, 149, 156, 170, 226, 246 Dreams 16, 27–8, 33, 39, 46, 48, 50, 100, 124, 137, 139, 151, 196–8, 202, 228, 236 Druids 21, 27, 33, 48, 52, 57, 63, 65, 96 Dualism 12, 30, 73, 80–1, 84, 87–8, 90, 92, 94, 99, 148, 149, 150, 170, 196, 203, 204, 235, 240 Dürer, Albrecht (1471–1528) 14, 236

Grabe, J. 112, 252 Greek, see Knowledge of Greek and Hebrew

Ecclestone, Alan (1904–92) 241–42 Effects of texts and images 4, 8, 13, 94, 99, 210, 232, 234, 235, 241 Elijah 90, 93, 103, 121, 130, 131, 138, 147, 190, 193, 208, 220 Eliot, T.S. (1888–1965) 239 Elisha 77, 147, 190 Elohim 46, 57, 73–4, 79, 97, 196, 209–10, 250 Energy, see also Desire xx, 27, 87–9, 92, 94, 100, 122, 127, 130, 150, Enoch, figure of 21, 77, 99, 102–4, 106, 114–18, 139, 250 Eschatology xiii, 28, 57, 79, 89, 90, 94, 103, 132, 140, 144, 146, 151, 153, 159, 172, 179, 186, 206, 208, 229–30 Eve 43, 74, 96–7, 123, 166 Experience 2, 3, 9, 11, 16, 19,37, 39–40, 50, 53, 62, 66, 68–9, 71–2, 123, 133, 141, 145, 159, 165–6, 172–4, 177, 186–7, 241

Image, image and text 4, 61, 234–5 Imagination 2,6–7, 9–11, 13, 30, 93, 99, 101, 118, 121, 129, 130–36, 142–5, 155, 159, 167, 168, 170, 174, 207–8, 210–11, 213, 221, 227, 230–1, 233–7, 240 Inspiration 4, 7, 10–13, 40, 47–8, 50, 68, 91, 118, 132, 138–9, 142, 145, 151–2, 153, 158–60, 166, 168, 179, 189, 192, 210, 228, 237–8, 249 Immanence 2, 16–17, 61

Fall 3, 12, 17, 46, 55–7, 83, 96–7, 100, 103–5, 119, 123, 143, 146, 163–4, 188, 208, 213, 235 Felpham xvii, 1, 133–5 Forgiveness of sins 1, 3, 19, 22, 40, 45, 47, 58, 62, 64, 71, 96–7, 100, 101, 105, 130, 147–8, 149–50, 180, 188, 195–9, 200, 207–14, 241 French Revolution xvi, 7, 30, 39, 122, 126 Friendship 64, 100, 180, 199, 206, 215, 234 Frye, Northrop (1912–91) xi, 3, 10, 22, 151–2, 161, 213, 240 Geddes, Alexander (1737–1802) 4, 87 Geneva Bible 125, 249, 250 Gnosticism 73, 76, 80–5, 98, 161, 196, 203–4, 213 Golgonooza 131, 148 Gospel 3, 10, 22, 89, 92, 159–60, 175, 178, 192, 196–9, 214 Gothic 19, 23, 30

Harlot/whore 1, 114, 146–9, 153, 156, 173, 197–8, 226–7, 246 Hayley, William (1745–1820) xvi, 66, 133, 219 H.ayyoth, see also Zoas 107, 252 Hebrew 19, 26, 43, 45–7, 73, 96, 98, 100, 106, 141–2, 172, 176, 209, 235, 249, 251 Hermeneutics 9, 11–12, 13, 19, 68, 71–2, 158–9, 160, 163, 172, 176, 211, 230, 234, 237–40 Holiness, sanctity 4, 12, 17, 87, 93–5, 101, 140, 147, 188, 212, 214–6, 231, 235

Jehovah 22, 57, 73, 74, 84, 146, 196, 198–9, 208–9, 250 Jerusalem (Preface to Milton) Jerusalem 10, 61, 121, 147–8, Jesus Christ 7, 10, 20, 22 56, 61–2, 73, 76, 79, 81, 83–4, 86–9, 92–5, 102, 116, 124, 127, 130–2, 136, 138–9, 149, 158–9, 162, 164, 169, 177–8, 181–99, 205–7, 209–11, 217–24, 229–30 Jews, Judaism 8, 9, 24, 68, 74–9, 83, 95, 150, 191, 201, 206, Joachim of Fiore (c.1135–1202) 123, 131, 159–60 Joseph parent of Jesus 196–99, 207, 218 Judgment 10, 21, 47,50, 55, 57, 58, 71, 106, 147, 194–5, 217, 228–30 Kairos 88 Kingdom of God 88, 139, 158 Knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, Blake’s 190 Lamb 9, 60, 104, 120, 123, 130, 136, 145–8, 150, 154–5, 189, 209, 222, 224–5, 227, 230, 247 Laurence, Richard (1760–1838) 77, 103–16, 187 Law 2, 4, 16, 19, 22–4, 46–7, 60, 72–4, 77–8, 81–4, 87, 94, 99, 101, 118, 163–7, 171, 175, 177–80, 181–208, 212, 214–5

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288

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INDEX

OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS

Leviathan 33, 52–5, 92, 214 see also Behemoth Linnell, John (1792–1882) xvi–xviii, 14, 66 Lisbon earthquake 15 Locke, John (1632–1704) 11, 84, 143, 144, 147, 150 London 3, 125–6, 129, 137, 148, 152–5, 227, 253 Lord’s Prayer 17, 21–2, 56, 89, 142, 195–6, 199, 229 Los 3, 68, 83–4, 99–100, 102, 121, 130, 146–8, 237 Love xx, 8, 19, 60–2, 64, 68, 101, 127, 130, 148, 160, 164, 169, 176–7, 179–80, 182–3, 187–8, 197, 202, 206, 213, 220, 241 Lowth, Robert (1710–187) 128, 174 Luther, Martin (1483–1546) 202, 254 Marcion of Sinope (c. 85–160) 204 Marsin, M (fl. 1696–1701) 159, 253, 255 Mary Magdalene 136, 182–8 Mary, mother of Jesus 122, 196–8, 217–20 Marx, Karl (1818–83) 171 Mercy 33, 64, 80, 84, 114, 116, 130, 148, 194, 197, 199, 209, 210, 223 Memory 5, 10, 14, 16, 23, 40, 47, 50, 64, 68, 100, 118, 166, 168, 179, 189, 205, 235, 239 Merkabah see also Chariot 122, 138, 140–5, 213, 224, 252 Metatron 77, 104 Michelangelo (1475–1564) 228 Millennium 88, 121, 126, 151, 193, 258 Milton, John (1608–74) see also Paradise Lost 25, 68, 78, 83, 92, 100, 144, 158, 161, 189, 202, 214, 218, 220, 237–9, 257 ‘minute particulars’ 11, 15, 33, 89, 98, 101, 122, 143, 155, 198 Miracles 194–5 Moloch 27–8, 43, 78, 250 Monism 47, 73, 83 Monotheism 73–85 Moravianism 230, 252 Moses 6, 70, 77–8, 87, 138, 181–2, 185, 201–7, 214, 220 Muentzer, Thomas (c. 1488–1525) 159 Mystic, mysticism 200, 202, 213, 218, 241 Nag Hammadi Library 81–2, 98 Nativity of Jesus 189, 217–24 Nebuchadnezzar 71, 91, 94 Newton, Isaac (1643–1727) 11, 84, 101, 143, 147, 150, 159, 192, 233 Nicodemus 191, 229 Obligation 33, 46, 48, 58, 66, 189, 202, 204 Orc 99, 130, 146, 258

Panacea Society, Bedford 124 Paradise Lost 15, 27, 43, 71, 83, 96, 114, 189, 223, 250 Patriarchs 21, 24, 27, 43, 50, 97, 102, 106, 117, 220, 249 Paul, Saul of Tarsus 9, 12, 22, 62, 135, 140, 150, 158–9, 167, 190, 199–216, 221, 239 Peace 101, 127, 143, 156,163–4, 168–9, 212, 218, 220, 227 pity 31, 42, 101–2, 148, 154–5, 184, 188 Poetic genius 12, 71, 84, 119, 127–8, 147, 166 Predestination 101 Priests, priesthood 12, 62, 95–102, 119, 127, 157, 195–6, 215, 221, 223, 237 Prophecy xii, xiv, xvi–xvii, 1–2, 4, 10–12, 22, 30, 52, 61, 71, 75–6, 83–4, 88, 90, 94–5, 99, 102, 106, 118–19, 120–56, 158, 166, 170–4, 178, 193, 195, 208, 210, 213, 234, 237–8, 242 Radicalism 1–2, 12, 17, 62, 78, 96, 118, 126, 129, 133, 151, 157–207, 227, 238, 241 Rahab 9, 114, 146, 149 Reason, rationality xvii, xx, 3, 6, 9–11, 27, 69, 71, 88, 92–3, 101, 132, 142, 143, 147, 151, 164, 168, 175, 179, 194–5, 216 Reimarus, H.S. (1694–1768) 191 ‘Religion hid in war’ 1, 114, 149, 151, 241, 242 Rembrandt (1606–1669) 13, 256–7 Resurrection 56, 89, 91, 203, 208, 213, 246 Ruskin, John (1819–1900) xv, 13, 234 Sachexegese, Sachkritik xv, 239, 252 Sacrifice 21–2, 27, 47, 57, 62, 64, 69–70, 75, 78, 149, 186, 197, 203, 207–9, 212, 214 Satan 23–48, 55–8, 64, 78–80, 84–5, 92, 100, 116, 119, 120, 123, 146, 168, 187–9, 192–3, 195, 209, 227, 246 Scrolls 5, 18, 24, 26, 28, 31, 33, 59–60, 69, 106, 145, 224–5, 238 Selfhood 47–8, 57, 71, 78, 96, 100, 130, 136, 180, 188, 190, 200, 208–9, 211, 238 Sermon on the Mount 64 Serpent 24, 26, 32, 35, 43, 46–7, 52, 67, 82, 95, 97, 100, 112, 116, 123, 143, 163, 168–9, 183–4, 189–90, 208, 257 Shi’ur qomah 213 Sinai 77, 182, 185–6 Snake, see serpent Southcott, Joanna (1750–1814) 88, 122–6, 129, 131–2, 136, 253, 257–8 Spirit, Holy 2, 6–7, 9, 11–12, 22–3, 25, 27, 33, 39, 47, 50, 52, 55, 58, 60, 64, 65–6, 69,

INDEX

OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS

71–2, 74, 76, 79, 84–5, 92–3, 96, 100, 102, 104, 106–7,116, 118–9, 121–5, 127, 128–31, 139, 143, 146–7, 153, 157–80, 186, 188, 190, 192–4, 200–7, 210–14, 218, 220–1, 224–5, 228, 236, 238, 240–2, 247, 249, 250–6, 258–9 Swedenborg, Emanuel (1688–1772) xvi, 86–8, 91, 161, 238, 241 Theology, see also transcendence and immanence, 1–4, 12, 13, 15–16, 19, 21–2, 33, 36, 39, 46–8, 57, 60, 62, 64, 69, 76–80, 83–5, 91, 99, 132, 145, 160–1, 174, 176, 180, 198, 212, 218, 223, 225, 229, 236–7 Theophany 17, 37, 52, 55, 61, 104, 138 Tradition 1, 5, 11–12, 22–3, 40, 46, 53, 94, 96, 100, 103–4, 128, 138, 142, 144, 151, 159–61, 167, 178, 185, 192–3, 200, 205–6, 210, 213, 221, 227, 235, 237–39, 252, 255 Transcendence 2, 16–17, 22, 24, 43, 58, 60–1, 83, 86, 237 Transfiguration 136, 220–2, 258 Trusler (1735–1820) 5–7, 10–11, 136, 221, 234, 258

289

Urizen 4, 23, 46, 68, 83–4, 96–102, 117, 119, 142, 146, 235, 237, 250 Vaughan Williams, Ralph (1872–1958) xiv, 13 Violence 67, 86, 94–5, 116–19, 149, 151, 165, 169, 174, 177, 208, 226 Visions, visionary 2, 3, 4, 6–7, 10, 14–17, 19–20, 22, 28, 38–9, 40, 47–9, 55, 58, 61–2, 68, 75–6, 85, 98, 101–4, 107, 116, 118, 121, 125–6, 129, 132–41, 143–52, 158, 163, 165, 171, 173, 180, 196, 200–1, 208, 211, 213, 214, 220, 222, 224, 226–7, 233, 235–6, 239, 250, 255, 259 War, see also ‘religion hid in war’, 27, 122, 126, 130, 137, 149, 150, 156, 169, 193, 226–7 Ward, John, ‘Zion’ (1781–1837) xiii, 126, 132 Wheels 143–4, 193, 207, 224, 252–3 Winstanley, Gerrard (1609–76) 157–80, 195, 207, 227, 251, 254–5 Zinzendorf, Nicolaus Ludwig (1700–60) 230–1 Zoas, see also H.ayyoth, xvii, 9, 55, 62, 96, 140, 142, 249

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